Justin Drake proposes 'Beam Chain,' an Ethereum consensus layer redesign

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake announced a new consensus layer upgrade proposal at Devcon on Tuesday called "Beam Chain," in what some have memetically described as “Ethereum 3.0.”

Beam Chain would target faster block times, smaller validator stakes, "chain snarkifaction" and, ultimately, making Ethereum post-quantum secure, Drake said.

Drake framed the potential transition as part of Ethereum "eras," having moved from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake and now potentially entering the ZK era of Ethereum consensus. This would make heavy use of SNARKs as a technology — a type of cryptographic proof that allows one party to prove to another that they know certain information or that a computation is correct, without revealing the underlying data.

In terms of block production, it could mean faster slot times of four seconds compared to the current 12 and faster block finality within three slots. A slot is a fixed time interval within which a validator is assigned the responsibility of proposing a new block. It could also do away with epochs and just have slots, Drake suggested. An epoch is a collection of 32 slots that provide intervals for organizing validator duties, block validation and finalizing the blockchain.

Incorporating the other ideas from the research roadmap, the proposed upgrade could also introduce a staking cap and a 1 ETH native staking requirement to activate a validator node instead of 32 ETH, Drake said, as part of a "fantastic onboarding opportunity to bring fresh blood into the space."

Drake suggested the proposal would address some of the mistakes made in Ethereum's current Beacon Chain consensus layer design but emphasized that any such deployment would require community consensus. Outlining an estimated timeline for potential implementation, Drake said the speccing process could start from next year, with building beginning from 2026. A thorough testing phase of at least two years could then start from 2027 to make sure the update is production-grade and safe to deploy on the Ethereum mainnet.

'Native zkEVM is huge'

“Native zkEVM in particular is huge,” Ambient Finance founder Doug Colkitt speculated ahead of the announcement. “The gas limit can be eliminated entirely. Builders can build arbitrarily large blocks, since nodes only need to verify the snark. The only scaling limit left would be bandwidth.”

The proposal could substantially increase scaling on the Ethereum mainnet without Layer 2s, countering recent concerns over the impact of such networks on Ethereum. The rise of Layer 2 solutions in recent years has helped address scaling issues but has also “cannibalized” demand for Ethereum's base layer, complicating the relationship between ether's value and the broader ecosystem, according to CoinShares researcher Matthew Kimmell.

“From a certain perspective this basically eliminates the need for rollups entirely because the Layer 1 would have arbitrary scalability,” Ambient Finance's Colkitt said. However, he acknowledged that further centralization of block building would be the major tradeoff. “Already can see this tension internally between people who want to make sure the protocol is still friendly to home builders vs. some of the EF people who want to go full sail into professional builders only.”

Drake's 'most ambitious initiative to date'

In an announcement of an announcement ahead of Tuesday’s Devcon keynote, Drake described the proposal as his “most ambitious initiative to date.”

“For one year I have been thinking about what a from-scratch redesign of the Ethereum consensus layer could look like,” Drake wrote in an X post Monday. “The goal is to suggest a credible strategy to ship what is an extremely ambitious and exciting Beacon Chain roadmap, all on a reasonable timeframe.”

“After months of gestation alongside researchers and consensus devs I am finally ready to publicly present my proposal. It's early days and your participation is key should this new approach to tackling the consensus layer roadmap ever achieve rough consensus,” he added.

The biggest potential Ethereum protocol 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 proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus in September 2022, combining Ethereum’s mainnet with the Beacon Chain. It reduced Ethereum’s energy use by over 99% and set the stage for future scalability improvements.

The Merge was initially referred to as part of “Ethereum 2.0,” but the community shifted away from this term to avoid confusion. There was concern that "Ethereum 2.0" implied a new blockchain, which was misleading, and 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.

For similar reasons, Drake wants to avoid the moniker "Ethereum 3.0" for his Beam Chain proposal.

Ethereum Foundation moves funds ahead of Drake's keynote

Interestingly, the Ethereum Foundation sold 100 ETH for $334,316 in the stablecoin DAI just ahead of Drake's keynote, according to Spot On Chain.

It's the first ether sale by the foundation since releasing its financial report last week which revealed it holds about $970 million in treasury assets, divided between $788.7 million in cryptocurrencies, 99.45% of which are held in ether, and $181.5 million in non-crypto assets as of Oct 31, 2024.

The report followed scrutiny and negative reactions from the community in response to several large, unexplained transactions and ether sales by the foundation without prior notice, prompting calls for greater transparency. To manage risks, the foundation noted it periodically sells ether in bull markets to increase fiat reserves, ensuring funding stability during downturns. The Ethereum Foundation also outlined a new conflict of interest policy alongside the report.

Drake recently resigned from his advisor position at restaking platform EigenLayer amid concerns over substantial EIGEN token allocation payments, presenting a conflict of interest. "I want to apologise to the Ethereum community and EF [Ethereum Foundation] colleagues for the drama I caused," Drake said at the time. "In hindsight it was a bad move for me to make."

Ether initally fell around 4% amid Drake's talk to $3,215 before recovering, according to The Block's Ethereum Price Page. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap has gained over 35% in the past week.

Updated with additional details throughout.