As announced earlier, Beam has successfully completed the first Hard Fork.

At block height 321,321 the mining algorithm was changed from Beam Hash I to Beam Hash II.

Obviously, Team Beam was all online at the time of the fork, constantly monitoring the health of the network and prepared for any contingency.

It was a moment of suspense when block 321,320 was mined and we were all waiting to see the post-fork block 321,321 to appear. When it happened, it was a moment of joy and pride for the team.

Waiting for 321,321…

After the block 321,321 was mined

You could definitely see a lot more smiles on our faces. 😊🥰😁

Congrats to Sparkpool for having mined the first block with the new POW.

Aftermath

After the Hard Fork occurred, we witnessed a significant drop in difficulty, the reason being that not all the miners performed a timely upgrade. We made a lot of effort to notify everyone about the fork about 30 days in advance, but apparently, it was not enough.

However, in about 24 hours after the fork, the hash rate reached and eventually overcame its pre-fork value.

Why did we do the Fork

When Beam launched on Jan 3, 2019, we announced that we will perform two hard forks in the first 12 months of the project’s operation. The rationale is to signal to ASIC developers that there is no point to start developing ASICs until the second hard fork is out.

We timed the first fork roughly 6 months from launch, and the second one is expected at the beginning of 2020. The 6-month timeframe is chosen because that’s how long it usually takes to develop a new ASIC chip.

What else is in this Hard Fork

In addition to the algorithm change, we implemented several important features that are consensus-breaking and can only be done as part of a Hard Fork:

Support for Confidential Assets

Support for HTLS that enables payment channels

PoW requirement to post an SBBS message to prevent spam

A new minimum fee calculated as:

10 x Num. Inputs + 10 x Num. Kernels

The minimum fee is set to 100 Groth

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our wonderful community, the miners, the pools and the exchanges who worked diligently to perform the necessary software upgrades and help us pass the Hard Fork with flying colors.

We also want to extend special thanks to our PoW Advisor Wilke Trei (aka Lolliedieb) who developed Beam Hash I and Beam Hash II and was instrumental in making this fork happen.

Go Beam!