Beam

The asset under CoinGecko’s beam-2 ID is the BEAM contract at 0x62D0…bFcE and the native unit of chain 4337. It descends from Merit Circle’s gaming network.

The other Beam launched a Mimblewimble privacy chain in January 2019, has its own emission schedule and appears in CoinYQ’s privacy story. Matching names do not make its history relevant here.

Beam Network began as an Avalanche subnet and now calls itself a sovereign Avalanche L1. EVM compatibility lets the same token vocabulary travel, but each bridge representation has its own contract and custody path.

Merit Circle’s MIP-28 and MIP-29 replaced MC with BEAM at 1:100. Migration opened on 2023-10-26 and the official update kept a 2024-10-26 deadline.

The change transferred DAO governance utility and aligned gas, products and voting around BEAM. It was a governed redenomination, not 100-fold wealth creation.

The Ethereum token remains the canonical contract cited by Beam. Native BEAM pays every transaction on Beam Network, while wrapped and LayerZero forms handle other environments.

Horizon changed the operating bargain: permissionless validators and delegators stake BEAM, while an ERC-721 Node Token is also required to operate a validator.

The live dashboard showed 457 validators and 2.14B BEAM staked at review. It simultaneously warned that reward claims were paused because of an Aethir exploit—evidence that live operations can diverge from evergreen docs.

Ethereum totalSupply() returned 58,470,184,687.32069 BEAM on 2026-09-05. That precise number is a dated chain reading, not a promise of a permanent maximum.

Beam says burns permanently remove units and lower both circulating and maximum total supply. Protocol fees may be routed to burn contracts, but configuration matters.

The distribution page also says burns and extended lockups changed the schedule and that more information is still to come. A current allocation table cannot be reconstructed responsibly from the old MC plan alone.

BEAM votes can change specified protocol settings and place checks on DAO-adjacent entities. The Constitution and governing documents are the map; a token balance is not unrestricted command authority.

Beam Foundation is a memberless Cayman non-profit, so it has no shareholders and cannot distribute dividends. Tokenholders are expressly not its managers or controllers, though defined veto, co-approval and enforcement mechanisms can hold it accountable.

Beam Interface, another Cayman entity, operates the sites. Its terms distinguish those interfaces from public chains and contracts and disclaim custody, brokerage and fiduciary roles.

LayerZero’s Ethereum proxy OFT and Beam-side LZBEAM move value across domains. The bridge repository supports upgradeable patterns, making endpoint settings, upgrade keys and message verification part of the risk.

ValidatorManager and StakingManager are also proxies: maintainers document upgrades through ProxyAdmin calls prepared in the Beam Safe. On-chain permission review therefore matters alongside validator count.

BEAM grants gas use, staking/delegation and governance participation. It does not grant Foundation shares, direct treasury ownership, guaranteed rewards or redemption against Beam Interface or any other entity.