Beam, one of the significant privacy-focused crypto assets, is moving into the DeFi space in a bid to disrupt the $1.5 billion booming market. The project has since confirmed its second hard fork on June 28, an upgrade that will facilitate its debut in the DeFi space. This milestone comes with several modifications in Beam's ecosystem hence the bold move towards ‘Confidential DeFi.'

To enhance its privacy levels, Beam is built on the mimblewimble blockchain. This network designed to minimize transaction size to handle more activity, creating room for scalability. Also, it prevents one from reusing a blockchain address hence making it difficult for analytics firms to track crypto funds transferred on its chain.

With the DeFi market on a steep growth curve, Beam now wants to bring its underlying privacy features into this space. Currently, it is almost impossible to operate anonymously, given all transactions are recorded on Ethereum's public blockchain. This also applies to the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) as well. Beam has since highlighted its goal as,

“Beam will enable true private and decentralized DeFi instruments like private stablecoins and private synthetics which will track commodity, stocks, and ETFs.”

The new hardfork will facilitate the creation of Confidential Assets dubbed ‘Beam CA' set to run within the network as independent tokens. This feature is part of Eager Electron 5.0, a recent upgrade designed for the creation of Confidential DeFi apps. Notably, the CA's are linked with various assets ranging from commodities like gold to crypto-assets such as ETH.

Some fundamental privacy features embedded in the CA's include sending assets via non-interactive transactions and an option to unlink transaction history. The Beam CA's will be made available to users who can lock up to 3,000 Beam tokens, roughly $1,400 as of press date.

Apart from CA's, the Beam hardfork lays the ground for scriptless smart contracts. Beam's CTO, Alex Romanov, told Decrypt that the project would extend mimblewimble's infrastructure to enable anonymity in the digital contracts,

“As a part of building a confidential DeFi platform on top of the Beam blockchain, we will enable the creation of Mimblewimble-based sidechains and integrate a wide variety of Scriptless Contracts to support escrows, collateralized debt positions, multiparty transactions, and Oracle-based settlements.”

The hardfork will also scale Beam's DEX, which is currently available on atomic swaps as it completes the beta phase. Consequently, CA's will be tradeable against frequently favored assets like BTC, LTC, BEAM, and QTUM once they debut.

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