Welcome to the @OriginalWorks sponsored writing contest!

Status: CLOSED.

Accepted Languages:

• English

Start Time: ~8 PM ET, Friday
End Time: ~8 PM ET, Monday

Special Twitter 0.5 STEEM bonus!
Details outlined at the bottom.

This is a call to all great Steemit writers! Beam has sponsored a Steemit writing contest!

Please make sure to read the contest topic carefully. Good luck!

Prize Pool Total: 1125 STEEM

Prizes: 875 STEEM + 250 STEEM (100 bonuses of 2.5 STEEM!) + Twitter Bonus (Details Below)

• 1st Place: 79 STEEM
• 2nd Place: 70 STEEM
• 3rd Place: 65 STEEM
• 4th Place: 57 STEEM
• 5th Place: 45 STEEM
• 6th Place: 42 STEEM
• 7th Place: 37 STEEM
• 8th Place: 34 STEEM
• 9th Place: 30 STEEM
• 10th Place: 26 STEEM
• 11th Place: 24 STEEM
• 12th Place: 23 STEEM
• 13th Place: 22 STEEM
• 14th Place: 21 STEEM
• 15th Place: 20 STEEM
• 16th - 20th: 14 STEEM
• 21st - 25th: 10 STEEM
• 26th - 30th: 8 STEEM
• 31st - 40th: 7 STEEM
• 41st - 50th: 5 STEEM
• 51st - 150th: 2.5 STEEM Bonus

Deadline: 72 Hours

All articles must be submitted within 72 hours of this post to be considered!

Changes in submission rules below

What is Beam?

Beam is a truly anonymous store-of-value coin.

While maintaining the benefits of an immutable and incorruptible blockchain system such as Bitcoin, Beam is also built with scalability and features in mind.

• Private by default: The user has absolute control over transaction data available, allowing the option of transparency as well as privacy
• Based on Mimblewimble: Beam has smaller blocks than any other blockchain, giving it maximum scalability. It’s a faster and more efficient network

Computing, data storage, medicine and automotive markets make up a small sample of areas to which blockchains are being tested.

Bitcoin has started an entire revolution, but it is yet to be perfected when it comes to one of its’ core use cases: the private transferring of assets in a peer to peer fashion.

Beam is the solution that offers true anonymity as well scalable peer-to-peer transactions.

What can Beam do?

Beam is the scalable, confidential cryptocurrency. It uses the Mimblewimble protocol (famously named after the tongue-tying spell from Harry Potter) to automate its algorithms for the purposes of:

• Giving users control over which transaction information is shared, and to whom it is shared with
• Making a leaner blockchain with fewer transaction details per transaction: enabling faster confirmations and therefore very efficient scaling
• Tying multiple transactions into a single transaction, tying blocks into a single transaction, tying an entire blockchain into a single transaction
• Concealing transaction values for the sake of privacy
• Concealing addresses of both the sender and receiver
• Enabling multiple transaction types in a private manner: escrow, time locked, atomic swaps, etc.

Current Issues - Privacy?

Blockchains such as Bitcoin make it possible for people to track data and narrow down the source and end point of transactions. This makes it possible to eventually track back to the party involved in the transaction by analyzing the blockchain which is publicly available for all to see.

Therefore, even though a cryptocurrency may appear to be anonymous, careful analysis of how the money has travelled could reveal the user. This is a major concern for users who prioritize their security.

Blockchains themselves, even without added privacy features, are very bulky and computationally heavy. This makes them inefficient as well as prone to scalability issues as they grow to meet the global demand.

The Solution - Beam (Based on Mimblewimble)

The concept of Mimblewimble is to enable privacy transactions without clogging up the network. Beam is building their network from scratch in C++ based on Mimblewimble for this reason.

With Mimblewimble at its core, Beam can scale to accommodate mass adoption while still maintaining reasonable block sizes and allowing full control over privacy!

UNDER THE HOOD: Mimblewimble

Mimblewimble is a protocol published by an anonymous author; much like the famous Satoshi Nakamoto; creator of Bitcoin!

Mimblewimble focuses on
(a) Confidential Transactions and
(b) Transaction Cut – Through. [1]

(a) Confidential Transactions use cryptographic commitment scheme with 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 time comes you can reveal the key and the person can make sure that your commitment is valid (blinding) while she can not know what is was before the key is received (hiding).

(b) Transaction Cut – Through:

A block in a block chain is a large list of transactions and can be thought of as one large transaction to be “cut through” (combining all the transactions in between A-Z). Applying this principle even further from individual blocks to the entire blockchain creates a system that only needs the current state of transactions instead of the entire history of all transactions as they occurred (which is how Bitcoin works).

With this system, unspent transactions outputs (a transaction received by a user which has persisted in the blockchain) can be proved to belong to the receiving user via the value of the message and the value of the blinding factor. After creating the transaction, only the commitment is recorded on the blockchain; not the addresses of the users or the amounts exchanged.

Cutting down the amount of data required to store and verify transaction data allows Mimblewimble to work with smaller blocks!

More in depth information about the protocol as it relates specifically to r values, range proofs and other technicalities can be reviewed in the Mimblewimble WhitePaper and in the Beam Position Paper.

Beam in a Nutshell

Beam is built on Mimblewimble to allow users to send and receive money in a secure and private way. These properties are a result of the protocol’s ability to remove the need for addresses and amounts in the verification of transactions.

The less records each block, and therefore the entire blockchain, must support results in a faster, leaner and more scalable blockchain architecture. The privacy and efficiency of this architecture synergistically help each other!

Basically, instead of proving A -> B -> C; you can Beam A -> C all the while increasing your privacy, and decreasing the load on the system!

Beam Downloads & Testnet

Beam Use-Case

Case 1:
John has a been in the cryptocurrency space from the very beginning and has amassed quite a fortune. He wants to continue storing his Bitcoins, but since he has been around for a while, there are quite a few transactions that lead back to him. He is worried that his fortune is on the public radar, and that it can be deciphered should somebody decide to do so.

He can’t leave it on an exchange due to security concerns, and yet he can’t leave it offline because he needs to access his funds to invest, and make purchases.

His research leads him to Beam. Regardless of how many transactions are made from his wallet, his holding information will never be traceable. It also offers features like escrow which he often likes to use in his dealings!

Case 2:
Grace works for an accounting firm - CryptoAccounting Inc. They are well known for being on the bleeding edge of new technologies. They are experts in accounting as it relates to cryptocurrencies.

Grace is the head finance engineer responsible for applying the most up to date technologies to their accounting practices!

One of the issues that CryptoAccounting Inc. faces is the limitation of choice when it comes to privacy. While their corporate clients want to broadcast their business transactions to their investors, they want to keep individual employee salaries private. Existing blockchain solutions put employees at risk of breach of privacy.

This is when Grace found out about Beam!

With Beam, companies can control transparency at a corporate level while retaining privacy for their employees. With Beam, companies can use one layer of blockchain technology to handle their finances instead of depending on a combination of cryptocurrencies!

For more information watch this presentation by the CEO, Alexander Zaidelson: