The cryptocurrency industry may soon welcome a new category of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications as privacy-focus coin Beam (BEAM) plans to execute its second hard fork, which would give DeFi apps a privacy layer.
According to a press release shared with CryptoPotato, the system-wide upgrade dubbed Beam Eager Electron 5.0 is expected to occur today, at exactly block 777,777.
Beam Settles With BeamHash III
The hard fork of the Mimblewimble-based privacy coin will be the last “planned consensus change” and will roll out exciting features, including shifting the network’s PoW algorithm from BeamHash II to BeamHash III.
BeamHash III is a bandwidth and memory PoW algorithm designed to support the network’s GPU architectures while enhancing the network’s security and longevity.
In anticipation of the upgrade, notable changes that would support the upgrade have been made and released, such as BEAM’s wallet and nodes. Mining pools and exchanges have also made adequate preparations to support the hard fork.
Beam Eager Electron 5.0 would not require Beam users to carry out difficult actions beyond a software upgrade.
Privacy For DeFi Apps
The DeFi market is booming and could be the next big thing in the crypto industry. In just one year, the total value locked in DeFi projects has surpassed $1.6 billion from a mere $317 million with over $15 million worth of ETH being locked daily.
However, while the DeFi sector continues to record tremendous growth and moving towards mainstream adoption, DeFi apps lack a feature that is considered important in the crypto space – privacy – since most DeFi Projects are based on Ethereum.
Fortunately, Beam hopes to change that narrative as the upcoming hard fork will further support the creation of privacy-focused DeFi apps on top of the Beam blockchain.
Commenting on the development, Alex Romanov, Beam CTO said:
Eager Electron 5.0 is a major step forward, both technologically and product-wise, to making Beam a leading platform for confidential decentralized financial applications allowing trading any value, anytime, quickly, reliably, and privately.
Other features that would come with the upgrade include a breaking linkability feature to protect users from falling victim to hackers as well as making the transaction process of its Confidential Assets (CA) easier.
CAs are independent tokens on the Beam network and can be issued by Beam users who have more than 3,000 BEAMS ($1,498) locked. There are three types of CA, including Confidential Synthetics, Confidential Wrapped Assets, and Community Coins and Tokens.
Beam stated that its CAs are considered as the first-class token of its ecosystem, and would be given the same priority as its native token – BEAM.
Beam Atomic Swap
Interestingly, Beam Eager Electron 5.0 would also feature the official launch of the network’s Atomic Swap, thus allowing Beam’s CA to be swapped with other cryptocurrencies like BEAM, BTC, LTC, and QTUM.
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