What Is Beam (BEAM)?
BEAM is a confidential decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that runs on a combination of two blockchain protocols (LelantusMW and Mimblewimble).
In the early years of the industry, transactions with public-blockchain cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) were thought to be untraceable. With developments in blockchain analysis, it became clear that transactions can actually be traced back to the senders, posing a great threat to users' privacy.
To solve this issue, BEAM came up with innovative ways of increasing the anonymity of transactions, address balances and user identities.
Beam runs on the Mimblewimble protocol and was launched in March 2018.
Who Are the Founders of BEAM?
Some of the leading team members of Beam include Alexander Zaidelson, Alex Romanov and Amir Aaronson.
Alexander Zaidelson is the project’s CEO. He started his career as a software developer and is an advisor to several startup projects. He has also founded a P2P file-sharing company Nareos.
Alex Romanov, the CTO, has worked with large teams on several complex projects.
Besides working on Beam, Amir Aaronson, the COO, has co-founded several technological companies.
What Makes Beam Unique?
Beam allows financial counterparties to make safe, stable and reliable transactions. This helps eliminate the problem of user data mismanagement, keeping the system cleaner and more secure. Beam’s blockchain was built on the C++ programming language from scratch.
User addresses are kept confidential at all times and are never disclosed to any third parties. Users have total access and control over their privacy, deciding who can access their information and what they are allowed to see.
Beam supports custom transactions of different types, such as escrow, atomic swaps and time-locked ones.
How Many Beam (BEAM) Coins Are There in Circulation?
Beam has a maximum supply of 262,800,000 tokens, of which 81,970,000 are in circulation as of February 2021.
How Is the Beam Network Secured?
Beam uses the Equihash proof-of-work algorithm which was chosen for its capacity to handle large amounts of data.
Where Can You Buy BEAM?
BEAM can be traded on several major cryptocurrency exchanges, including:
Learn more about how to buy Bitcoin with our own guide.