BEAM : BRINGING PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY TO THE BLOCKCHAIN

Introduction

Transactions in a block chain are believed to be private and anonymous. But is that truly the case? Would a user's identity still be anonymous should they misplace their keys or their accounts get hacked into?

One of the problems most users of the innovative blockchain technology face is how to prevent their transaction data from unauthorized access. The current blockchain technology is designed In such a way that anyone in the network can gain access to a fellow user's transaction details such as accout balance, previous transaction addresses and amounts. Even though the users are said to be anonymous, many individuals and organizations are not comfortable with this.

Leaving a user's transaction information and account details to be available to anyone without the knowledge of the user, may open such user to attack. Most hackers picking users account to hack on the blockchain are succeeding because they are gaining access to user's account information. No hacker would want to waste his time to hack anyone 's account if he/she isn't sure that something tangible is in there for him or her.

This is why Beam has come forward with a solution that offers the users of a blockchain utmost privacy and confidentiality over their account's details and transactions. I will be talking about Beam in the preceding paragraphs.

About Beam

Beam gives its users control over their information on a blockchain. It empowers its users to keep their transactions details private and inaccessible to any other person on the blockchain without their authorization. With beam, transaction addresses and amounts don't get stored on the blockchain for everyone to access easily. Beam hides these delicate information from the public and make them accessible to only those involved in the transaction. These features of beam are made possible by a protocol called " the mimblewimble" protocol.

Mimbledible

Mimblewimble is a protocol that controls the working of beam. Its name was gotten from the famous Harry porter's book. It uses two distinct technologies to grant users control over their information stored on the blockchain and their transaction details. They are;

confidential transaction, and
transaction cut-through

confidential transaction:

Confidential transaction enables the sender or initiator of the transaction to keep the transaction details confidential or private until he or she is ready to reveal the transaction details to the receiver. This aspect of the mimblewimble protocol has two features known as hiding and binding. The sender of the transaction hides every detail of the transaction pending when he transfers the key or code to access the transaction to the receiver for the receiver to access the transaction (binding ).

With this technology, no other party can gain access to the transaction information or details between two individuals on the blockchain. Only the individual the transaction is directed to can be able to access the transaction's information in the blockchain.

transaction cut-through :

This feature of mimblewimble gives attention to the most current transaction being initiated. Blockchain is structured in a way where previous transactions are taking note of and the history followed to maintain a new transaction. But the transaction cut-through technology of mimblewimble treats each transaction individually by creating a separate small block for that transaction. This feature makes beam fast, scalable and very secure. The transacation cut-through doesn't store valuable information like transaction addresses and amounts on the blockchain, it only stores the commitment of the transaction on the blockchain.

This makes a user's transaction details impossible to be traced since all the transaction's information are not recorded on the blockchain. The smallness of the blocks for initiating a transaction also makes the network very fast and scalable. since large data are not stored or recorded on the block, transaction processing speed is faster in beam and the performance of the system is greatly improved.

Benefits of Beam

Beam offers some wonder benefits to its users and the crypto space. Some of the benefits including :

user's control :

With beam, the user is given complete control over their transaction details. Users has the power to determine who can access their details and when. This will strengthen security of blockchain technology and reduce the practice of singling out large accounts for attack by hackers.

Transactions are completely confidential :

No other person can gain access to any details of a transaction involving two users. The transaction details is secured until it gets to the receiver and the unlocking code released.

faster processing speed and scalable blockchain:

The ability to create smaller blocks through the cut-through Technology, makes beam's performance faster and the blockchain very scaleable. Very little data are processed and as a result, a shorter time is required to process a transaction. Multpile transactions can be initiated at a go with no lapse in the network.

Beam is very compatible :
The equihash algorithms of beam makes it easily adoptable by existing miners.
Bems is very user friendly. It's equipped with great tools that supports the daily needs of its user. It has both a mobile and a desktop wallet to make it easily accessible to everyone.
Beam supports a variety of transaction types. It's features allow its users to carry out various transaction types on it with ease.
Beam is very sustainable because it was implemented from scratch using c++ by a team of developers. Etc.

Use cases

Case 1

Sarah is the CEO of a private company that discovered the importance of blockchain technology to the advancement of her company's products and services all over the globe. She discussed with the board of directors of the opportunities blockchain technology presents to their company. The board agreed with her but their major concern was how they will keep private those aspects of their business that they don't want to share with the public like their worker's salaries, business transactions, etc. Sarah did her research and found beam. She went back to the board and told them of her findings and they all agreed to her proposal because of Beam.

Case 2

Ikechukwu is a big crypto investor. His crypto portfolio got so huge thaheat he started receiving some unsolicited links from unknown individuals. He knew his account information that was easily accessible was responsible for those many phishing links he has been receiving. He consulted some of his colleagues in the industry and they referred him to Beam. Since he connected to beam he has been able to keep his account details from unauthorized access and he has stopped receiving the phishing links he was receiving prior to discovering beam.