If you are a crypto enthusiast and supporter then I am sure you are concerned about how things are shaping up in the crypto world
How many of us wish we had magic powers or a wand to fix what is not right in the crypto world disappear?
Try borrowing my magic wand (originally from Harry Potter off course) and say the magic words
mimblewimble...
Before you use the mimblewimble magic we need to tell the readers what is wrong in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystem.
The advent of bitcoin was a revolution money which was under centralized control of governance and banks moved to a decentralized world with bitcoins.
The bitcoins and later other cryptocurrencies emerged as a store of values which was power by the blockchain. Initially this appeared as a great thing but then the world realized that every bitcoin and similar blockchain driven cryptocurrency left behind a long trail of transactions onto the blockchain.
Cyber experts could examine this data and track you down. If you see bitcoins and cryptocurrencies as money then the last thing you want is that others track you down by the trail of transactions that you generate.
This feature of cryptocurrencies compromises your privacy and takes away your freedom.
Does it mean we can never use bitcoins and other similar cryptocurrencies as money ?
Beam is a solution for this cryptocurrency problem.
Beam is a cryptocurrency that lets the users send and receive money in a secure and anonymous manner. The sending and receiving addresses are never stored on the blockchain.
Beam's private and secure transactions are implemented using Mimblewimble Protocol.
The result is transactions are faster. The pay load associated with each transaction is much smaller and this implementation is a scalable and efficient blockchain architectuire.
The aim of Beam is to create an anonymous and secure storage of value cryptocurrency.
This is achieved using the Mimblewimble protocol.
There are a number of distinct advantages of using Beam. These are as follows:
- It gives full control to the sender of transaction as to what information is shared and with whom.
- It transmits lesser amount of information of transaction there by the transactions speed is faster confirmations are quicker and effiucient scaling is achieved.
- multiple transactions each of which is stripped off the non essential information such as the sender and recipient addresses there by clubbed into a single block. So each block size is reduced yet it transfers a lot more information.
- Privacy is achieved by concealing the Transaction values
- the addresses of sender and recipient are also concealed
- this protocol can handle multiple types of transactions such as atomic swaps, time locked transactions, escrow etc.
How Mimblewimble achieves privacy?
Mimblewimble uses to essential concepts these are
- Confidential Transactions and
- Transaction Cut – Through
The Confidential Transaction Implementation
The Confidential Transactions is implemented based on the following methodology.
Suppose person A gives a safebox with a message inside it to another person B then this is the use of hiding property.at some point person A hands over the key of the box to person B who uses this key to access the message and validate that the commitment made by person A is valid.This property is called binding. Together hiding and binding are used to achieve confidential transactions.
Transaction Cut – Through
A transaction between two parties A and B means taking from A and giving to B
A block inside the blockchain is a list of transactions . A cut through principal is used to store only the essential part of the information. For this only the current state is noted and transmitted rather than the entire history of transactions .
In this scheme after the transaction is created the commitment is recorded on the blockchain and not the addresses or the amount transacted. This cuts down the data that needs to be stored and used to verify the transaction. the following infographic helps us understand how the system works .
Beam Use Case
Alex works in the accounts department of a company. The company employees want the salaries to be paid in cryptocurrency.
The company management has asked Alex to find a viable way of doing this implementation.
After studying about bitcoin and blockchains Alex realizes that it is unsafe and not viable to put the employee information onto the blockchain.
Ben a coworker of Alex introduces him to Beam.
Alex discovers that using Beam the company can maintain the employee confidentiality, never put sensitive data about the company onto the blockchain and yet achieve the task of making payments to employees in cryptocurrencies.
Beam emergence as an anonymous, scalable, secure, fast and efficient method to use cryptocurrencies.
Summary
There is a big need for having the ability to store value in cryptocurrency anonymously. Failing which it would be difficult to use it as replacement for money or as true storage of value.
Beam fulfills this deficit and create a great opportunity to be the leader in the use of cryptocurrency.
Its efficiency lies in its simplicity.
Suppose A needs to send a transaction to a person C.
While executive the transaction the path taken is
A-> B -> C
In this case the blockchain would note the essentials of the transaction
A-> C and ignore the non essential part.
The Beam wallet and Testnet is functional one can try it here
More Information & Resources:
- Beam Website
- Beam Position Paper
- Mimblewimble Paper
- Beam YouTube
- Beam Telegram
- Beam Facebook
- Beam Github
- Beam Bitcointalk
- Beam Medium
- Beam Twitter
https://steemit.com/crypto/@originalworks/1125-steem-sponsored-writing-contest-beam
twitter post :
https://twitter.com/btcfan3/status/1039234675062042624
- btcfan3
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