Ethereum Unveils “Beam Chain” Roadmap at Devcon 7

Key Points:

• Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed “Beam Chain,” a new consensus layer upgrade, at Devcon 7.
• Beam Chain aims to improve Ethereum’s scalability and performance with faster block times, reduced staking requirements, and zkEVM integration.

Justin Drake’s ‘Beam Chain’ aims to reduce block times, lower staking requirements, and enhance Ethereum’s scalability and post-quantum security.

Beam Chain: A Potential Upgrade for Ethereum 3.0

At the Devcon 7 event in Bangkok, Thailand, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake unveiled a new consensus layer upgrade proposal called “Beam Chain,” which some have metaphorically described as “Ethereum 3.0.”

Drake said Beam Chain would target several of Ethereum’s current issues, including:

• Reducing block creation time to 2 seconds: This could lead to faster slot times, around 4 seconds compared to the current 12 seconds, and faster block finality within 3 slots. (A slot is a fixed time interval in which a validator is assigned the responsibility of proposing a new block).
• Reducing the minimum staking requirement: The Beam Chain upgrade is expected to require a minimum stake of only 1 ETH to activate a validator node, instead of the current 32 ETH – consistent with the support from founder Vitalik Buterin shared earlier in October.
• Implementing “Chain Snarkifaction” with zkEVM integration: This would significantly increase scalability on the Ethereum mainnet without the need for Layer-2, countering recent user concerns about the impact of Layer-2 networks on Ethereum.
• Enhancing post-quantum security for Ethereum: The upgrade could also eliminate the gas limit, allowing developers to build arbitrarily large blocks as nodes only need to verify SNARKs – consistent with rumors previously spread by Doug Colkitt, founder of Ambient Finance.

In an announcement preceding his keynote speech at Devcon, Justin Drake described this proposal as his “most ambitious initiative to date.”

Beam Chain – The Biggest Potential Ethereum Upgrade Since The Merge

If implemented, Drake’s proposal would be the biggest upgrade to Ethereum since The Merge.

The Merge was Ethereum’s major transition from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism in September 2022, combining the Ethereum mainnet with the Beacon Chain. It reduced Ethereum’s energy consumption by over 99% and paved the way for future scalability improvements.

The Merge was initially referred to as part of “Ethereum 2.0,” but the community moved away from this term to avoid confusion. There were concerns that “Ethereum 2.0” implied a new blockchain, which was misleading. Dropping the term also helped prevent scams where users might think they needed to swap ETH for a non-existent “ETH2” token.

Referring to the change as “The Merge” provided a clearer, more accurate description and allowed each phase of Ethereum’s upgrade roadmap to be discussed independently.

The proposals within “Beam Chain” were mostly previously put forward by Ethereum’s “father” Vitalik Buterin in the network upgrade plan for the post-Merge era, shared in mid-October 2024.