An Israeli startup has launched the first cryptocurrency, Beam, with custom privacy settings. The Beam cryptocurrency was launched on January 3 on the MimbleWimble protocol and offers a radically new approach to digital transactions, emphasizing the ability to hide the amounts being transferred using "blinding factors".

The MimbleWimble protocol was first presented in 2016, when someone under the nickname majorplayer appeared in the IRC chat of Bitcoin developers and published a proposal for scaling and improving the privacy of Bitcoin — MimbleWimble. Integrating this protocol into Bitcoin is currently only possible within a sidechain — through a soft fork; however, on its basis it became possible to launch new cryptocurrencies: Grin and Beam.

The idea for Beam appeared in March 2018, and as early as January 3, 2019, on the day of Bitcoin's tenth anniversary, the official launch of the private digital currency took place. The release of Grin is also planned for the near future, presumably, January 15.

Beam is positioned as a new private alternative to Bitcoin. The project was supported by many key Bitcoin developers, including Bryan Bishop, Gregory Maxwell, Andrew Poelstra and Jameson Lopp. "If you are interested in a high-tech cyberpunk protocol, take a look at Grin and Beam," Lopp wrote on his Twitter back in September 2018.

Along with the launch of Beam, the project team also released a desktop application with a built-in node for mining the cryptocurrency on a CPU, a multi-platform wallet, and separately presented solutions for running network nodes and two different mining clients.

According to the project information on GitHub, Beam users can decide for themselves which transaction data is available to other network participants. Thus, cryptocurrency holders are able to fully control their personal data and retain the ability to conduct transactions with the level of transparency they need.

It is worth noting that, unlike most cryptocurrencies, Beam has no addresses. Users have only a set of keys to control unspent assets (unspent outputs — UTXOs). Projects based on MimblWhimble do not need wallet addresses — only a "blinding factor" and proof that tokens belong to a specific network participant. All the network needs to know is a list of unspent outputs at the current point in time and their validity.

The cryptocurrency also uses an additional technology, Dandelion, which allows hiding active network traffic by making the paths along which transactions pass in the decentralized network random.