Beam makes confidentiality a protocol property instead of a layer on top

Confidential by default, from the base layer up

Beam is presented as a confidential cryptocurrency and a DeFi platform, and the first thing in its feature list is that all transactions are confidential by default. That phrasing does the heavy lifting. Privacy in cryptocurrency usually arrives as an optional mode, a shielded balance, a mixing step or a second layer over a transparent ledger, and in those designs the default state is public. Beam takes the opposite position, which means the chain itself carries the property rather than an overlay. The lineage explains why: the project is based on the LelantusMW protocol, which builds on the Mimblewimble paper and the Lelantus paper, both linked from the README. The chain launched on 3 January 2019, uses Proof of Work with a bespoke BeamHash III algorithm, is minable on GPUs, and had no premine and no ICO. Emission is capped, with a periodic halving every four years, and governance runs through the BeamX DAO using the BEAMX governance token.

Confidential Assets are in the protocol, not in a contract

The feature that separates Beam from a plain privacy coin is the ability to create new confidential assets, and the README is explicit that this is part of the protocol and requires no contracts. That is a different design choice from issuing a token through a smart contract, and it has direct consequences for anyone building on the chain. Asset creation is a base layer operation, so it does not depend on a contract runtime being correct or available, and a confidential asset inherits the confidentiality of the base layer rather than asking a contract to enforce it. Privacy preserving smart contracts do exist, and they run on a bespoke Beam Virtual Machine based on WASM technology, with the specification and a shader SDK published separately. The architecture is therefore two layers: a protocol that handles confidential value transfer and confidential assets, and a WASM virtual machine for programmable logic on top of it.

Bridges and atomic swaps carry the interoperability story

A confidential chain only stays useful if value can move in and out of it, and the README lists two mechanisms. The first is a bridge with the Ethereum blockchain, supporting USDT, DAI, WBTC and ETH, which is the conventional route for moving between a private chain and a public one. The second is fully decentralized atomic swaps, with BTC, LTC, ETH, DASH, DOGE and QTUM named, paired with an in-wallet marketplace. The distinction matters. A bridge is generally a service with an operator on one side, whereas an atomic swap is a protocol level exchange that does not need a custodian, and the word fully decentralized in the README is doing the differentiating work. For a user of the wallet, the in-wallet marketplace is what turns that list into a feature rather than a footnote, since the assets can be traded from the same interface that holds them.

The DeFi layer is a set of separate products, and some are community built

The README describes a rich DeFi ecosystem that includes a DEX, a Confidential Stable Coin, an Anonymous Name Service and an NFT Gallery. Note what this list is: a set of applications on top of the base layer rather than features of the base layer, and the presence of an Anonymous Name Service tells you that the identity layer is treated as a separate problem to be solved by the application, not baked into the protocol. The repository also carries a section for community projects, with a caveat that they were created by community members and are not tested by the Beam team: BeamAssets.com, described as a DeFi dashboard and blockchain explorer, Beam Pay, a payment processor for online store integration, and a Beam Wallet Java API library for the wallet interface. That caveat is worth reading twice, because it is the difference between a project with an ecosystem and a project with volunteers. An integrator should treat those three as unverified starting points rather than as supported components.

The Docker image runs a masternet node, it does not build one

The Dockerfile in the repository is short and does something you might not expect: it does not compile the code. It starts from ubuntu:18.04, downloads a prebuilt node archive, extracts it and throws the archive away:

FROM ubuntu:18.04

# Define arguments
ARG beam=beam-node-masternet.tar.gz 

# Install.
RUN \
  apt-get -y  update  && \
  mkdir -p  /home/beam/node/ && \
  apt-get -y install wget  && \
  wget -P /home/beam/node/  https://builds.beam.mw/master/latest/Release/linux/$beam  && \
  cd /home/beam/node/  && tar -xvf $beam && rm -rf $beam && \
  apt-get purge wget -y && \
  apt-get autoremove -y && \
  rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

The image then declares a volume for the node directory, exposes port 10000 and starts the masternet node with a list of peers. That naming is worth internalising: the masternet is the live network, so a container that joins it is a node in production, not a sandbox. The build scripts and instructions for compiling from source are linked separately from the wiki, so the image is a deployment convenience rather than a reproducible build. The bootstrap node addresses in the README point to eu-nodes.mainnet.beam.mw on port 8100 and us-nodes.mainnet.beam.mw on port 8100, which is what a fresh node needs to find the network.

One tree holds the node, the wallet, the virtual machine and the explorer

The top level of the repository shows the scope of the project. There is a core directory, a node directory, a wallet directory, a pow directory for the mining code, a p2p directory for peer to peer code, and a treasury directory. The virtual machine side has a bvm directory and a wasmclient directory, and the front ends have an explorer directory, an http directory and a websocket directory. Then there is the supporting infrastructure that tells you what the project takes seriously: a keykeeper directory, a mnemonic directory, a hw_crypto directory for hardware wallet work, a 3rdparty directory, a Doxyfile for generated documentation, a SECURITY.md, a beam-common.cfg configuration file, a version.h.in template, an android directory with its own build script, a notarize.sh script and a macos_cert.enc file for macOS signing. There is a CMakeLists.txt at the root and a cmake directory, and the wallet API is exposed through wapi.acl, an access control list for the wallet API surface. For a reviewer, that last file is the one to look at first if you care about who may call which wallet method.

Releases, hotfixes and emergency upgrades are part of the history

The release history is unusual and worth reading carefully. The most recent tags are a hotfix, beam-7.5.14493, on 2026-07-01 and an emergency network upgrade, emergency-hf6, on the previous day, while the tag before that, beam-7.5.13882, dates from 2024-05-25. So the version numbering is not a simple march forward, and the two most recent releases are not ordinary feature releases. An emergency network upgrade is a coordinated change to consensus, which means node operators cannot simply ignore it the way they can ignore a wallet bug fix, and a hotfix shipped next to it suggests the two are related. The licence is Apache-2.0, with the LICENSE file at the repository root, which is the permissive choice and lets integrators embed the code. The repository is not archived and the last push was on 2026-10-10, so work continues between releases. The documentation lives at beam.mw/en/docs and the binaries at beam.mw/downloads, with the contribution guide in the project wiki.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt this codebase if you are building on Beam itself, whether as a node operator, a wallet integrator or a DeFi project on the Beam Virtual Machine, since the repository carries the node, wallet, virtual machine and explorer in one build. Do not adopt it as an anonymous cash equivalent or as a transparent chain with a privacy add-on, because confidentiality here is a property of the base layer rather than an optional mode. Before you build on it, pin the exact release you target, since the recent history includes a hotfix and an emergency network upgrade, and read the upgrade notes for your version, because consensus changes are coordinated rather than rolled out by the usual release process.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. BeamMW/beam on GitHub
2. License: Apache-2.0
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases