May 20th, 2021 at 12:00 pm UTC · 4 min read
Beam, a layer one privacy blockchain based on a suite of privacy-centric tech such as Mimblewimble, Lelantus-MW and Dandelion has raised $2M to build a decentralized finance ecosystem on a private and scalable blockchain.
Individual and institutional investors who joined the round include Collider Ventures, Altonomy, LionsChain, Alternity Capital, Youbi Capital, AirSpeed18, Bering Waters, Taureon, Patrick Dai, Winslow Strong, Ivo Georgiev and others.
The funding will be used to promote Beam’s upcoming blockchain upgrade, which will see the blockchain introduce more support for Confidential Assets and Smart Contracts running in the Beam Virtual Machine, executing code compiled to WebAssembly (WASM).
The Beam protocol enables Confidential Assets, allowing developers to create tokens that are fully private and integrated as first-class citizens on the Beam blockchain, thus benefiting from the same strong privacy guarantees.
In addition to Confidential Assets, the launch of the Beam Virtual Machine (BVM) will open the blockchain to full programmability through Shaders, implementation of Smart Contracts. To boost the adoption, the BVM was chosen to run WebAssembly (WASM) to potentially support around 40 high-level programming languages, including C and C++, Python, Go, Rust, Java, and PHP. The smart contracts will enable a complete range of DeFi applications including decentralized exchanges, lending protocols and algorithmic stablecoins.
In parallel to the Mainnet deployment of the BVM, the Beam Foundation will gradually transition governance to BeamX DAO, an on-chain decentralized autonomous organization governed by the token, one of the first Confidential Assets on the blockchain.
In late June, the first governance DAPPs for voting in the BeamX DAO and to stake BEAM for BEAMX will become accessible straight from the DAPP store, embedded into Beam wallets. Bridge integrations with Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polkadot and other blockchains will also be added later on, in addition to the future integration of on-chain oracles.
Amir Aaronson, COO of Beam Foundation, says:
“We are excited to close the investment round to build the new vision of Beam. Once we achieved such an amazing privacy level with Beam, we figured it’s time to build on top of this great privacy-preserving tech the platform for DeFi DAPPs and to make the project more decentralised. By deploying Confidential Assets and WASM smart contracts, Beam is set to be the most advanced blockchain for private DeFi, the next major evolution for this space.”
When paying for something in the fiat world, it is not customary to flash the entire contents of your wallet. We all love crypto for facilitating borderless trading and fast payments. But one thing that is severely lacking is the control over the visibility of our funds, made especially difficult with major blockchains displaying publicly the addresses, holdings, and balances. No trader, investor or VC benefits from exposing their entire portfolio for public scrutiny.
Not only coins but transactions are public too, therefore any observer can see the funds sent and received, the times’ transactions took place and the parties involved in the transaction. In the Internet era, the news spreads fast. Here is one example from just this week — the entire history of Mark Cuban’s account now belongs to the crowd, forever. Whale monitoring services such as zerion.io, whalemap.io and whale-alert.io are very popular, along with various other blockchain analytics tools.
In the DeFi realm, the situation is even worse: the current non-custodial trading is like playing poker where everyone’s cards are clearly seen. All the orders are public so anyone can identify their originator and “steal” some by setting a higher transaction fee (a.k.a. Front-running). No need to mention that trading strategies can be re-engineered with great ease. Not only orders but also stake and LP funds are visible on services such as debank.com.
In Beam, all transactions are completely confidential, neither the identities nor amounts can be seen on a blockchain. The DeFi applications protect the user identity while disclosing only the data necessary for the smart contract operation. Topped with the best-in-class user experience, Beam wallets are intuitive to use and will always keep your funds and transactions away from prying eyes.
Beam is rapidly penetrating the realm with an elegantly syndicated suite of confidential financial applications allowing the trading of any value, anytime, quickly, reliably and privately. It is time to push Beam beyond the competition, increasing the use cases and extensibility, promoting a private future with the much-needed confidential DeFi.