Ethereum Foundation researchers propose consensus layer upgrade proposal "Beam Chain"

Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, proposed a new consensus layer upgrade proposal "Beam Chain" at the Devcon conference, which was called "Ethereum 3.0" by the community. The proposal aims to achieve faster block times, lower validator staking requirements, "on-chain snarking" and improvements in quantum security. The core of Beam Chain is to introduce technologies such as zkVM to greatly improve the scalability of the Ethereum mainnet, even without relying on Layer 2 solutions. Doug Colkitt, founder of Ambient Finance, said that the localization of zkEVM may completely eliminate gas restrictions, allowing nodes to only verify snarks, theoretically achieving unlimited scalability of L1. Nevertheless, the proposal may lead to further centralization of block construction. Drake emphasized that the final implementation of Beam Chain requires community consensus and called it his "most ambitious proposal to date." He previously resigned from his advisory position due to potential conflicts of interest with EigenLayer. (The Block)