Why Ethereum’s Beam Chain Needs to Take Five Years

• Ethereum is on the brink of a major overhaul.
• While the Ethereum overhaul promises several benefits, users have issues with the timeline.
• A prominent developer has responded to these gripes.

The Ethereum network is considering another major overhaul two years after the Merge , which saw it swap its Proof-of-Work (PoW) engine for Proof-of-Stake (PoS) . The latest overhaul proposed by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake is called Beam Chain , a batch of major changes to Ethereum’s consensus layer, the Beacon Chain, that promises to unlock mouth-watering scalability and security benefits.

However, for several Ethereum community members, the planned overhaul has just one problem: its rollout is expected to take five years.

A Long Time in Crypto Years?

“good tech but 2029-2030 delivery lol”

“5 years to…do what SOL already does? gg”

“This is 500 years in crypto time. Ethereum is going to get lapped.”

These are just some of the reactions that have followed Drake’s proposed Beam Chain roadmap, which earmarks 2025 for agreeing on specifications, 2026 for production coding, and 2027 through 2029 for testing. 

For many, the projected timeline is too long, considering several newer generation blockchains like Solana already have what Ethereum seeks to achieve on offer, i.e., fast and cheap transactions, at least as far as the end user is concerned. 

So, why does Ethereum have to take so long? A prominent network contributor recently explained.

“Not Some Random Alt-L1”

Defending Justin Drake’s proposed timeline, prominent Ethereum contributor “cygaar” argued that much was at stake.

"Ethereum is not some random alt-L1 with very little activity. It is the second largest blockchain in the world with 60B in TVL, an underlying asset worth 400B, and thousands of apps dependent on it," cygaar wrote.

According to the analyst, with this much at stake, major changes like Beam Chain had to check several boxes, including achieving social consensus, unanimously accepted specifications, backward compatibility, and thorough testing.

“Several of the changes proposed in the beam chain will require complete rewrites of how parts of Ethereum work. 3-slot finality and chain snarkification are massive undertakings,” he stressed.

“The worst possible scenario is for a bug/exploit to be introduced in these changes, causing millions of people to lose money.”

Whether this explanation will lessen most community members’ disappointment remains to be seen.

On the Flipside 

• Beam Chain is still only a proposal.
• Beam Chain does not change the content of Ethereum’s consensus layer roadmap but tries to accelerate it. This suggests these planned upgrades could take longer outside the Beam Chain framework.

Why This Matters 

Beam Chain is the largest proposed overhaul of the Ethereum network since the Merge. After a turbulent year, its proposed benefits could unite the Ethereum network under a single narrative.