The post Rethinking Ethereum consensus with Beam Chain appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake introduced a proposal to overhaul Ethereum’s consensus layer, called the “Beam Chain.” This redesign, pitched to a packed house at Devcon Bangkok today, aims to modernize a part of Ethereum’s core infrastructure while maintaining compatibility and decentralization. “I want to take what may sound like a totally crazy idea and convince you that it might not be so crazy,” he said.  The idea is to accelerate parts of the Ethereum roadmap to take advantage of cryptographic advancements, address inefficiencies and clear out existing technical debt incurred since the 5-year-old design of the Beacon Chain, Ethereum’s current consensus layer. From Beacon to Beam The Beacon Chain officially launched on Dec. 1, 2020, marking the beginning of Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and kicking off what was known as Ethereum 2.0. The Beacon Chain operated separately from the Ethereum mainnet until the Merge, which unified them under the PoS consensus in September 2022. Blockchain technology evolves rapidly and researchers now have a clearer understanding of complex elements like Maximum Extractable Value (MEV). Advances in cryptographic tools, especially SNARKs (succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge) and zk-VMs (zero-knowledge virtual machines), offer Ethereum new methods to achieve decentralization and security with greater efficiency. Beam Chain’s proposal includes improvements in three main areas. First, it tackles block production by decentralizing the builder and relay levels, enhancing censorship resistance, and introducing faster slot times — four-second blocks with faster finality — while still accommodating a wider range of validators, including home stakers. “The truth is that five years ago our mindset was ‘security first’…performance was not really a main consideration,” Drake told the audience. “With the benefit of hindsight, we found that there are designs that preserve all the security that we want and at the same time take some…

---

Filed under: News - @ November 12, 2024 7:25 pm