By: 0XNATALIE

At the Devcon conference, Justin Drake, a core member of the Ethereum Foundation, proposed a comprehensive reconstruction of the consensus layer of Ethereum, called Beam Chain. By redesigning the consensus layer, it aims to mitigate the issues of MEV, improve scalability and security, and implement performance improvements using ZK technology. Beam Chain mainly follows changes in the consensus layer and does not involve creating new tokens or altering the existing blockchain architecture.

The existing Consensus layer (Beacon Chain) of ETH has a history of five years. Although it has performed well in terms of security, technical debt has been accumulating over time. In addition, with the in-depth research of the ETH community on MEV and the rapid progress of ZK technology, the existing Consensus layer lacks adaptability to emerging technologies. The Beam Chain restructuring plan aims to remove technical burdens, allowing ETH to be more flexible and adaptable in the future.

Technical highlights

On a technical level, Beam Chain has two features: Snarkification achieved through ZKVM and the use of hash-based aggregated signatures.

The Consensus layer is mainly responsible for how all Nodes in the network reach a consensus on the state of the chain (such as transaction order, account balance, etc.). In Ethereum, the tasks of the Consensus layer include validating Blocks, verifying signatures, handling forks, and maintaining and updating account states. The key operation of the Consensus layer is state transition, which is the transition from the state of one Block (such as account balance after a transaction) to the state of the next Block. These operations often involve a lot of calculations, and Snarkification is a technique that converts the calculation process into Zero-Knowledge Proofs.

Beam Chain uses ZKVM to Snarkify the consensus layer, transforming the state transition function into a Zero-Knowledge Proof. ZKVM is responsible for moving the computation process off-chain, thus relieving the on-chain computational burden. Each Node can confirm the correctness of the state by verifying the Zero-Knowledge Proof without redundant computation. In addition, Beam Chain allows validators to choose the appropriate ZKVM without forcing a specific ZKVM into the on-chain protocol.

Meanwhile, with the development of Quantum Computer, traditional encryption techniques (such as elliptic curve encryption) may face the risk of being cracked. This means that the security of current blockchain systems (such as Private Key and signature verification) may be compromised after the appearance of Quantum Computer. To address this threat, Beam Chain introduces a hash-based aggregated signature scheme. The hash function has post-quantum security, which can resist attacks from quantum computing. This scheme not only improves the efficiency of signature aggregation but also provides higher security guarantees for the future.

In addition, Beam Chain adopts PBS, introducing a list and conducting auctions to reduce the negative impact of MEV. It also plans to drop the minimum stake requirement for validators from 32 ETH to 1 ETH to further enhance Decentralization. The transition of the entire Beam Chain will be phased, gradually replacing the functionality of the Beacon Chain, which is expected to take five years.

Community View

Concerns about development time: The community has expressed concerns about the 5-year development cycle for Beam Chain, and some members have questioned whether the goal of Beam Chain is to gradually approach the features of Solana, similar to Ethereum.

Delphi Ventures founding partner José Maria Macedo is disappointed with Beam Chain. He believes that the core improvement of Beam Chain is nothing more than a refactoring of the codebase, including a 4-second block time and 'anti-quantum attack' capability, but these changes are expected to be realized only by 2029-2030. Such improvements are not enough to keep ETH L1 competitive in the blockchain competition, let alone shape the narrative of ETH's long-term competitiveness.

Helius CEO Mert also expressed concerns about the development timeline of Beam Chain. If Beam Chain does indeed need until 2029 to be released, Ethereum may struggle to maintain competitiveness in the rapidly evolving blockchain competition.

EthStorage co-founder Qi Zhou believes that the time it will take for Beam Chain to complete is too long, estimated to be until 2030. He suggests focusing on using a single programming language (such as Rust or Go) to speed up the implementation process. Ethereum can refer to Cosmos's 're-genesis' model in dealing with technical debt (re-generating the Block chain Genesis Block, retaining core state data of users and contracts, and removing redundant historical data and obsolete code in the system) to address technical burdens and legacy issues through a thorough reset.

Hydrogen Labs co-founder Meir is concerned that the timeline for Beam Chain is too long and may not meet the scalability needs of Ethereum as a fully functional blockchain. If Ethereum's goal is to be an efficient blockchain platform rather than just a DA, it needs faster and more aggressive scalability improvements, rather than progressive optimization over the next five years.

Developer cygaar explained why the 5-year roadmap for Beam Chain is necessary. He pointed out that Ethereum is not just a small-scale blockchain, it is the second largest blockchain in the world, with $60 billion TVL, $400 billion in underlying asset value, and thousands of applications relying on it. Implementing such large-scale changes on a distributed, real-time Ethereum network is extremely difficult and involves great risks, so it requires long preparation and rigorous testing. Any mistake could result in significant user losses.

Prysm maintainer terence expressed concerns about the long implementation time of Beam Chain for Ethereum clients, which is the "ultimate goal" of Ethereum. During this period, Ethereum will continue to improve through Hard Fork. Some proposals in Beam Chain will help improve Ethereum's decentralization and anti-censorship capabilities. At the same time, before implementation, Ethereum will also continuously improve data availability, anti-censorship capabilities, EVM performance, etc., to meet changing needs.

Flashbots' strategic leader Hasu believes that the Beam Chain proposal should not be overly hyped as it is a long-term project that will take at least 5 years to implement, and most of the improvements are already in the technical roadmap. The real innovation lies in bundling these improvements for testing and eventually replacing the entire chain, which should have been the highlight of the acceleration process. However, many community members mistakenly viewed this proposal as an exciting release of 'ETH 3.0' and even hoped to emulate some features of Solana, leading to unmet expectations.

MetaLeX founder gabrielShapir0 believes that the core value of Ethereum lies in its decentralization and autonomy, while Beam Chain will greatly enhance these core features. Many people hope that Ethereum can provide different products, services, or cater to popular trends and narratives, but that is not the positioning of Ethereum, but the direction of Solana.

Technical Challenges

ETH Foundation core member Péter believes that the proposal of Beam Chain has too many changes bundled together, which may pose potential issues from both technical and governance perspectives. Technically, the combination of too many changes increases the possibility of errors. In terms of governance, bundling multiple changes may lead to neglect of details and increase the risk of controversy. He suggests addressing low-difficulty improvement tasks on the Beacon Chain first, and then implementing more complex changes in stages to allow the system to adapt gradually and avoid comprehensive reforms all at once.

ETH researcher mteam said that although the proposal for Beam Chain is announced as a new concept, it actually consolidates many old ideas from the past. He supports this proposal, but is also concerned that this upgrade may disrupt research at the execution layer. The execution layer and the consensus layer are two independent research directions that should be improved in parallel to avoid mutual interference.

SMG research director Max Resnick believes that Ethereum needs a grander vision and should not be bound by incremental improvements every five years. He calls for a return to Ethereum's original intention to become a global computing platform that helps developers solve the most complex coordination problems. He proposed goals that Ethereum should achieve in the next five years, including: achieving 1-second block time; single-slot finality to facilitate cross-chain interaction; significantly increasing throughput (>1000 TPS); multiple parallel proposers to achieve real-time censorship resistance.