Beam Chain Poised To Be Ethereum's Biggest Upgrade Since The Merge

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has proposed a major redesign of Ethereum's consensus layer called "Beam Chain," which will be the network's biggest update since The Merge.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has proposed a major redesign of the network’s consensus layer dubbed “Beam Chain,” which will be the biggest update to the blockchain since The Merge.

The upgrade will include a “complete redesign of the consensus layer that incorporates all of the latest and greatest ideas from the Ethereum roadmap,” Drake said during a Nov. 12 appearance at the Ethereum Devcon conference in Bangkok.

“The beacon chain is kind of old,” Drake said during his speech at the conference, adding that “the spec was frozen five years ago.”

In that time, Drake says Ethereum developers have gained a “much better understanding” of how to adapt to maximal extractable value strategies employed by sophisticated traders, which sometimes impact users of the blockchain.

As such, he believes it is now time for an upgrade to the consensus layer of Ethereum. Drake added that Beam Chain will enable faster block times, make Ethereum post-quantum secure, set staking caps and reduce the minimum stake for validators on the network from 32 ETH to 1.

The proposed redesign will also rely heavily on SNARKs and address some of the mistakes made in the design of the current Beacon Chain consensus layer of Ethereum. Drake said that the proposed redesign will only be deployed once it is approved by the community.

The proposal from Drake for a redesigned consensus layer of Ethereum was coupled with a second consecutive day of inflows into US spot Ethereum ETFs (exchange-traded funds) yesterday.

After registering net inflows of $295.5 million on Monday, investors added another $135.9 million to the funds on Nov. 12, according to data from Farside Investors.

BlackRock’s ETHA ETF maintained its dominance with $131.4 million inflows on the day, pushing its cumulative reserves to over $1.67 billion.

However, Grayscale’s ETHE ETF resumed its streak of outflows after a 5-day pause, with investors pulling out $33.2 million from the fund.