According to this official announcement post, Beam has released the testnet for its next update EE 5.1.9763.
The previous fork titled Eager Electron 5.0 (which occurred at block height 777,777 on June 28, 2020), was a Hardfork that brought about major changes to the Beam blockchain, and the foundation/team has continued to work hard to ensure that some of the newest features on version 5.0 are being implemented in the wallet as soon as possible.
This post is a short summary of what we have so far from all EE 5.x updates:
EE 5.0.
Lelantus Mimblewimble (Le-Mw):
This is considered the most important update with EE 5.0, because it brought about significant change to the consensus protocol, including the migration from Mimblewimble to Lelantus Mimblewimble. Le-Mw is the result of the combining Beam's Mimblewimble with a modified version of Lelantus. Le-Mw brings extra privacy features that further decimates the chances of Linkability on Beam, including an anonymity pool of 65k.Beam Hash III: An upgrade of the mining algorithm for Beam. Beamhash III brought some key benefits for the network such as stability, better performance, cost-efficiency, and a larger scope. Beamhash III is also easier to implement than the previous mining algorithm (BeamHash II), and will also utilize memory bandwidth properly. With BeamHash III, future upgrades can be done without having to change the algorithm anymore.
One-sided transactions: This is the basic framework that allows for Beam wallets to perform non-interactive transactions. Currently, sending and receiving Beams still requires that both the sender and receiver participates in creating and ensuring the success of the transaction. One-sided transactions will allow users to receive Beams without needing to keep the wallet online.
Confidential Assets: This feature allows for the creation of tokens on the Beam blockchain, just like you'd do it on blockchains like Ethereum. Confidential assets are privacy tokens themselves since they inherit all the confidential and scalability features of Beam. (Creating confidential assets on Beam only requires staking 3000 Beams for the process).
EE 5.1 Testnet.
The 5.1 Testnet version of Beam Desktop wallet was just officially released with a lot of technical changes and improvements added. The community is welcome to download and test it. Here are some of the changes:
- Offline transactions: Le-MW has been implemented in the wallet to provide offline payment functionality. With this update coming to the wallets, we'll have the option to receive Beams when the wallet is not online. This can be done by simply generating an offline payment address that serves as a bunch of vouchers, and then submitting that to the sender. With these vouchers, the wallet address can receive Beams offline up to 10 times before generating a new offline address. (Note that extra charges apply for offline transactions).
- Confirmation count: Confirmation count is implemented for wallet and in API to better align with exchanges. Pretty important because sending to exchange wallets takes a longer time than sending to normal user wallets. Great for tracking confirmations.
- Reduced Atomic Swap fees: SegWit support implemented to reduce atomic swap fees.
- And some minor Bug fixes.
Interested in testing? Download the Testnet wallet for your device here (supports both Windows and Mac): https://beam.mw/downloads/testnet-windows
PS: Testnet wallets give a warning sign about potential harm to your computer because they are unsigned. However, they are safe to install and test.
We're on telegram if you have questions: https://t.me/BeamPrivacy