Is the 5-Year Implementation Timeline for Beam Chain Reasonable? What Does the Community Think?

Written by: 0XNATALIE

At the Devcon conference, Justin Drake, a core member of the Ethereum Foundation, proposed a comprehensive restructuring of Ethereum's consensus layer, called Beam Chain. By redesigning the consensus layer, the proposal aims to alleviate the MEV problem, enhance scalability and security, and apply ZK technology to achieve performance improvements. Beam Chain primarily focuses on changes to the consensus layer and does not involve creating new tokens or altering the existing blockchain architecture.

The existing consensus layer of Ethereum (Beacon Chain) has been in place for five years. While it has performed well in terms of security, technical debt has been accumulating over time. Additionally, as the Ethereum community deepens its research on MEV and the rapid advancement of ZK technology, the existing consensus layer shows insufficient adaptability to emerging technologies. The Beam Chain restructuring plan aims to eliminate technical burdens, allowing Ethereum to be more flexible and adaptable in the future.

Technical Highlights

From a technical perspective, Beam Chain has two features: achieving Snarkification through ZKVM and using hash-based aggregate signatures.

The consensus layer is primarily responsible for how all nodes in the network reach consensus on the state of the chain (e.g., transaction order, account balances, 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 involves moving from the state of one block (e.g., account balances after transactions) to the state of the next block. These operations often involve significant computation, and Snarkification is a technique that converts the computation process into zero-knowledge proofs.

Beam Chain utilizes ZKVM to achieve Snarkification of the consensus layer, converting the state transition function into zero-knowledge proofs. ZKVM is responsible for moving the computation process off-chain, thereby reducing the on-chain computational burden. Each node can confirm whether the state is correct by verifying the zero-knowledge proof without needing to recompute. Furthermore, Beam Chain allows validators to choose suitable ZKVMs without mandating the inclusion of specific ZKVMs in the on-chain protocol.

At the same time, with the development of quantum computing, traditional cryptographic techniques (such as elliptic curve cryptography) may face the risk of being compromised. This means that the security of current blockchain systems (such as private keys and signature verification) could be undermined with the advent of quantum computers. To address this threat, Beam Chain introduces a hash-based aggregate signature scheme. Hash functions are post-quantum secure and 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.

Additionally, Beam Chain adopts PBS, introducing inclusion lists and execution auctions to reduce the negative impacts of MEV. It also plans to lower the minimum staking requirement for validators from 32 ETH to 1 ETH to further enhance decentralization. The entire transition to Beam Chain will occur in phases, gradually replacing the functions of Beacon Chain, with an expected timeline of five years.

Community Perspectives

Concerns about Development Time: The community generally expresses concerns about the five-year development cycle for Beam Chain, with some members questioning whether the goal of Beam Chain is to gradually bring Ethereum closer to the characteristics of Solana.

• José Maria Macedo, founding partner of Delphi Ventures, expressed disappointment with Beam Chain. He believes that the core improvements of Beam Chain are merely a restructuring of the codebase, including a 4-second block time and "quantum attack resistance," but these changes are not expected to be realized until 2029-2030. Such improvements are insufficient for Ethereum L1 to maintain an advantage in blockchain competition, and they fail to shape a narrative of long-term competitiveness for Ethereum.

• Mert, CEO of Solana development platform Helius, also expressed concerns about the timeline for Beam Chain's development. If Beam Chain indeed requires until 2029 for release, Ethereum may struggle to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving blockchain landscape.

• Qi Zhou, co-founder of EthStorage, believes that the expected completion time for Beam Chain by 2030 is excessively long. He suggests focusing on development using a single programming language (such as Rust or Go) to accelerate implementation. Ethereum can look to Cosmos's "re-genesis" model (which involves regenerating the blockchain's genesis block while retaining core state data of users and contracts, removing redundant historical data and outdated code) to address technical debt and legacy issues through a thorough reset.

• Meir, co-founder of Hydrogen Labs, is concerned that the timeline for Beam Chain is too long and may not meet Ethereum's scalability needs as a fully functional blockchain. If Ethereum's goal is to serve as an efficient blockchain platform rather than merely a data availability layer, it requires faster and more radical scalability improvements rather than gradual optimizations over the next five years.

• Cygaar, a developer at Abstract, explained why the five-year timeline for Beam Chain is necessary. He pointed out that Ethereum is not an ordinary small blockchain; it is the second-largest blockchain globally, with $60 billion in 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 challenging and involves significant risks, necessitating long preparation and rigorous testing. Any misstep could lead to substantial user losses.

• Terence, a maintainer of the Ethereum client Prysm, addressed concerns about the lengthy implementation time for Beam Chain, stating that Beam Chain is Ethereum's "ultimate goal." During this period, Ethereum will continue to improve through hard forks. Some proposals within Beam Chain will help enhance Ethereum's decentralization and censorship resistance. Additionally, before implementation, Ethereum will continuously improve data availability, censorship resistance, EVM performance, and other aspects to meet evolving demands.

• Hasu, strategic lead at Flashbots, believes that the Beam Chain proposal should not be overly hyped, as it is a long-term project that will take at least five years to realize, with most improvements already outlined in the technical roadmap. The real novelty lies in bundling these improvements for testing and future overall replacement on-chain, which should have been the highlight of accelerating the process. However, many community members mistakenly view this proposal as an exciting "Ethereum 3.0" release, even hoping to emulate some characteristics of Solana, leading to unmet expectations.

• Gabriel Shapir0, founder of MetaLeX, believes that Ethereum's core values lie in its decentralization and autonomy, and Beam Chain will significantly enhance these core features. Many hope that Ethereum can offer different products and services or cater to more popular trends and narratives, but that is not Ethereum's positioning; it is the direction of Solana.

Technical Challenges

• Péter, a core member of the Ethereum Foundation, believes that the Beam Chain proposal has too many changes bundled together, which poses potential issues from both technical and governance perspectives. Technically, too many combined changes increase the likelihood of errors. From a governance standpoint, bundling multiple changes may lead to overlooked details and increase the risk of controversy. He suggests first addressing low-difficulty improvement tasks on the Beacon Chain, and then gradually implementing more complex changes to allow the system to adapt progressively, avoiding a comprehensive overhaul all at once.

• Ethereum researcher mteam stated that while the Beam Chain proposal is announced as a new concept, it actually consolidates many old ideas from the past. He supports the proposal but is concerned that this upgrade may interfere with research on the execution layer. The execution layer and consensus layer are two independent research directions that should be improved in parallel to avoid mutual interference.

• Max Resnick, research director at SMG, stated that Ethereum needs a more grand vision and should not be constrained by gradual improvements every five years. He calls for a return to Ethereum's original intent, making it 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 times; single-slot finality for easier cross-chain interoperability; significantly increasing throughput (>1000 TPS); and enabling multiple parallel proposers to achieve real-time censorship resistance.

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