Beam (BEAM)

Beam aims to get rid of the system based on using addresses which are recorded in the blockchain and used to as a proof of ownership of the coins. With Beam, the UTXO ownership can be sufficiently confirmed by checking the value and the blinding factors only. The only thing kept in the blockchain is the commitment which becomes relevant once the wallets are prepared to engage in transaction.
In addition to removing personal information from the blockchain structure, each address on Beam has a regular expiration interval of 24 hours which is subject to changes through the wallet interface. Beam creators recommend their users to create new receiving address for each transaction.

Confidential transactions have a hiding feature and a blinding feature provided by Pedersen Commitments in conjunction with Elliptic Curve Cryptography. Using these private transactions allows users to hide or blind any of the information associated with transactions. This means only the sender and receiver know the transaction amounts.

This is achieved by using blinding factors to encrypt the transaction amounts. The blinding works by assigning a random value and multiplying the actual transaction amount by this random value. This is followed by a single multi-signature being created that covers all the inputs and outputs in the transaction.

When the transaction is received the recipient selects several blinding factors randomly. These can later be used as proof of ownership when it is time to spend the coins.

In August 2016 a new protocol was published by an anonymous author, suggesting an elegant to a spell from Harry Potter books, and it builds upon two concepts originally proposed by Greg Maxwell, namely and . The following is a high level explanation of the key principles of Mimblewimble. 

For more detailed explanation please read the original . Confidential transactions are implemented by using cryptographic commitment scheme which has two basic properties: hiding and binding. It is similar to giving someone a closed safe box with some message inside that only you know the combination for. 

When the time comes you can reveal the key and the person can make sure that your commitment is valid (binding) while he can not know what it was before the key is received (hiding). Mimblewimble utilizes a well known commitment scheme called Pedersen Commitment that achieves this using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and is of the form 

• C = r * G + v * H 

Where r is a blinding factor, a secret key hiding the real value v and G and H are generator point on a specific elliptic curve.

• Users have complete control over privacy - a user decides which information will be available and to which parties, having complete control over his personal data in accordance to his will and applicable laws. \
• Confidentiality without penalty - in BEAM confidential transactions do not cause bloating of the blockchain, avoiding excessive computational overhead or penalty on performance or scalability while completely concealing the transaction value.
• No trusted setup required.
• Blocks are mined using Equihash Proof-of-Work algorithm. • Limited emission using periodic halving with total amount of coins ~250 million.
• No addresses are stored in the blockchain - no information whatsoever about either the sender or the receiver of a transaction is stored in the blockchain.
• Scalability through compact blockchain size - using the “cut-through” feature of Mimblewimble makes the BEAM blockchain orders of magnitude smaller than any other blockchain implementation.
• BEAM supports many transaction types such as escrow transactions, time locked transactions, atomic swaps and more.
• No premine. No ICO. Backed by a treasury, emitted from every block during the first five years
• Implemented from scratch in C++ by a team of professional developers.

Beam Desktop

Beam Desktop Wallet is the simplest way to start using Beam. It is available for Linux, Mac and Windows platforms (see Supported Platforms for details). Start downloading here: https://www.beam.mw/downloads/mainnet

Ensure that the communication between your browser and Beam’s official website is encrypted by verifying that the padlock icon is displayed in its locked state on the URL bar. Once the application image is downloaded, double-click the icon to start the installation. Once Beam Wallet desktop app is installed, the wallet data files are stored separately from the binaries. As a part of creating a new wallet, a new seed phrase will be generated for you. Seed phrase is the most important secret you have to keep. Knowing the seed phrase enables you (or anyone else) to access all your funds.

Beam Mobile

Beam Mobile Wallet is the simplest way to start using Beam. It is currently available for Android, the iOS app is planned to be developed later on. Proceed to install Beam Wallet Mobile App by going to the Google Play store.

Download the mobile wallet. Once it’s done installing, open the app and agree to the Terms of use. Once you launch the wallet for the first time you will be suggested to create a new wallet. As a part of creating a new wallet, a new seed phrase will be generated for you. Seed phrase is the most important secret you have to keep. Knowing the seed phrase enables you (or anyone else) to access all your funds. In order to ensure that you have really written down your seed phrase, you will be asked to fill in the specific words from your seed phrase in random order.

Only when you typed all the selected words correctly, you will be allowed to proceed to the next step.