Beam

Beam is a best-in-class confidential cryptocurrency and DeFi platform.

Our focus is to deliver the best possible level of privacy and confidentiality without compromising on usability. This article will provide a brief overview of Beam project, what it can do, and how to get started with our platform.

Beam launched in March 2018 with a singular vision: creating the best possible privacy coin that does not compromise usability. We moved quickly to assemble a team of world-class developers that shared our vision of a genuinely confidential cryptocurrency. In nine short months, our team built the first version of the Beam blockchain, and on January 3rd, 2019, we launched the Mainnet. Since then, Beam has been delivering and expanding our promise of creating a truly confidential cryptocurrency (currently on version 6.0). Our entire project is open source from both a coding and development process. The Beam protocol is coded entirely from scratch; not a hard fork or cloning of another project.

Beam is a deflationary coin with capped emission and periodic halving every four years (similar to bitcoin). Beam uses a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm called BeamHash III (created by Wilke Trei, a.k.a., Lolliedieb, pdf) with emission starting from zero (e.g., no pre-mine or ICO) and is currently mined on GPUs. See our mining guide for more information on how-to mine Beam coins.

During the last three years of the project's existence, we have made many improvements and additions to our technological stack. Currently, Beam uses a combination of Mimblewimble and Lelantus protocol on layer 1, with transactions routed through Dandelion++ and transactions merging in stem phase on Layer 0 for ultimate privacy.