Beam (BEAM)

In this coin report, we highlight the workings of our partner Beam, previously known as Merit Circle, a decentralized entity that is seeking to revolutionize the crypto gaming scene. With a treasury north of $200M+, their DAO channels their funds into their investment portfolio and bets big via their own network – Beam. How are they doing this exactly? Well, let’s take a look at their magic.

What is Beam (BEAM)?

Beam pioneers a digital ecosystem designed by a global community that aims to redefine the future of gaming. With years of expertise and a strong foothold in the web3 domain, the ‘circle of merit’ is dedicated to investing in the space and eyes to become the household name in Web3 Gaming.

 Beam is an ever-evolving digital ecosystem built by a global community to ensure the future of gaming.

The utilization of their own sovereign network will enable true ownership for users, and will allow the collective, rather than solely developers, to own their ‘weight’ in the next generation of games. A paradigm shift that could bring a transformation to the way effort and skills convert into tangible ownership.

Beam Opening up Game economies

Founder and Team of Beam

The vision for the project was founded in 2020 and was incubated by Flow Ventures. Quickly the team behind Beam formed and ranged from gaming and cryptocurrency experts.

With the founder of the project and Chief Growth Officer Marco van den Heuvel, who previously worked for Presearch and other blockchain projects, up front, Tommy Quite as the CFO and who is also the Co-founder of Flow Ventures, and Mark Borsten as the COO that has experience in the finance industry.

This review of Beam (BEAM) was created for informational purposes. This article is not intended for promotion.

General info about Beam (BEAM)

Beam’s Sovereign Blockchain – Beam

To do this, Beam has launched their own sovereign network, Beam. This started as an open-source blockchain subnet on Avalanche that is engineered for the gaming universe and stands as an ecosystem within game development while lifting the player’s experience.

It’s important to note that the Beam tech stack is chain agnostic, which allows it to potentially be implemented on any blockchain where gaming is popular. An agile approach that is exemplified by their first step towards expansion: the collaboration with Immutable ZKevm.

Beam is not just a set of tools for gamers and developers; it is a vision that seeks to permeate through various gaming communities and studios.

With this network, Beam aims to open up limitless potential to transform games into something much greater, where gaming becomes not only a lifestyle, which it is for many already, but a way to earn an income and own what value you put into it.

The ecosystem exists out of more than an open source blockchain specialized for gaming. It has other important sectors that each simplify the complexities of game development and enhance the gaming experience.

The current suite of products is currently as follows:

Beam Companion App

The Beam companion app is a gaming buddy that lets gamers take control of their in-game assets and send them to friends seamlessly, with a limited number of games currently live that can be found there.

It is especially designed for gamers on the Beam network, letting them keep track of their gaming assets and statistics. Potentially interesting as you will earn while gaming in future game launches done via the Beam network. This Beam companion app can be downloaded via IOS; Android.

Merit Circle Companion

Sphere

The NFT marketplace for gaming assets can be found in the sphere, not to be confused with the Las Vegas sphere, but more of a digital market that deserves as much attention as the one in Vegas. Here you can buy or sell your collections which could be customizations and skins of the games running on Beam. For example, Forgotten Playland boxes or customizations can be found in the Sphere.

Given the collaboration of Beam with Immutable and Polygon, they support the Immutable zkEVM (ZeroKnowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine), built specially for gaming, and a way to index every single collection on that network.

Merit Circle Sphere

Beam Hub

Next, we have the Beam hub. If you want to explore games and don’t know where to start, then the Beam hub is the perfect place to discover new games and even take part in web3 campaigns. 

This is the place where you can complete a list of quests and earn points, while you are at it. With these points, you are eligible for the rewards set out by the projects that host their campaign on Beam. You can create an account via this link.

Beam Gaming Academy

The Gaming Academy is an educational initiative within Beam Hub, designed to empower gamers by providing them with the knowledge and tools to enhance their gaming skills.

Beam OS and Beam SDK

BeamOS is the operating system and starting point for Beam. Meaning whenever significant updates are live for any game, they become visible on the OS. So anyone can see the  newly added products and developers can use the Beam SDK (Software Development Kit) as a starting point to launch their games.

Merit Circle SDK

Partners of Beam DAO

Beam has established partnerships with prominent names in our industry, such as well-established companies like LayerZero, Immutable and Polygon for interoperability solutions and scalable infrastructure providing. Crypto-native firms or funds show their deep entrenchment in the crypto Industry. These will probably not be their only ones, going into the future, as they are bound to scale.

Merit Circle Partners

The Beam DAO

Beam, crypto-native that it is, is run by the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which means Beam is governed in a decentralized manner by its community of token holders.

This means that core decisions are made by the community who uses the BEAM token to cast their votes on potential outcomes on proposals that could be made by anyone via their governance forums.

On these forums, the proposals will be determined on Snapshot, the DAO’s preferred voting platform.

Merit Circle Governance

There are two main categories of governance proposals:

  • Binding proposals: Which are proposals that may be enforced autonomously on-chain after a vote has successfully passed, or otherwise.
  • Signaling proposals: Which are all other governance proposals made. For example, signaling a preference for certain code or functions to be added to Beam or a business decision to be made by a DAO-adjacent entity, e.g. to enter into a particular agreement. 

 

How Does the Voting Process Work?

Once a proposal has been discussed and meets the necessary criteria, it moves to the voting stage. A proposal needs at least 25% of poll votes in favor at the end of the discussion period to proceed. 

What Happens After a Proposal Is Approved?

If a proposal is approved in the voting phase, the decision will be implemented if it is enforceable on-chain. If the decision cannot be enforced on-chain, it remains non-binding and serves primarily for sentiment signaling purposes. 

Beam Investment Portfolio

The investment vertical of Beam manages the DAO’s treasury, and focuses on venture, token, equity, and NFT investments to ensure long-term, risk-adjusted returns. It seeks to grow the treasury while maintaining transparency, operational efficiency, and capital efficiency.

Merit Circle Portfolio

This is done all on-chain and is kept published in their quarterly treasury management updates, where they report on their strategic asset liquidation.

Beam and Aethir

As seen in the Treasury Report, Beam has a strategic and symbiotic relationship with Aethir, having invested significantly in it (a position of staked ATH, locked ATH, and Aethir Nodes), thereby facilitating integration with the Beam gaming ecosystem to distribute cloud computing.

This investment not only benefits Aethir by expanding its operational scope and user base but also enhances the Beam ecosystem by providing its developers with essential computing resources. An in-depth analysis of Aethir can be found here.

Beam and Sophon

They have also invested heavily and contributed to the incubation of Sophon, a Modular Rollup utilizing zkSync technology that focuses on providing logistics for high-throughput applications like AI and gaming. An in-depth analysis can be found here.

Additionally, Sophon has sold 123,554 nodes, gathering over 20,000 in ETH. Concluding the node sale, Sophon has opened the farming portal, which allows anyone to deposit a wide variety of assets to earn SP (Sophon Points). To date, over 220M in TVL has been committed.

Merit Circle Sophon

Forgotten Playland – Own Game

Forgotten Playland, the own game of Beam and incubated by major stakeholders in the gaming industry, has also received the deserved attention and funds, as they geared up for a comprehensive launch that includes new token utilities for FP. With a funding position of $5,546,275, the project is set to capture significant attention towards the end of the year. A complete analysis of Forgotten Playland can be found here.

Other Investments

  1. Gaming Investments: The portfolio heavily focuses on gaming projects, such as Kokodi, Fableborne, Zentry, Param Labs, Pixelverse, and Aria. These investments showcase the company’s commitment to supporting innovative gaming experiences that leverage blockchain technology.
  2. Infrastructure and Ecosystem Development: Investments in projects like Monad Labs, and Bluefin demonstrate the company’s interest in supporting the underlying infrastructure and ecosystems that enable the growth of blockchain gaming and decentralized applications.
  3. Strategic Partnerships and Funding: The company has formed strategic partnerships with prominent industry players, such as the Inevitable Games Fund, and has participated in significant funding rounds for projects like Monad Labs and Aria.

Edenhorde – NFT Collection

Quick note, Beam also has its own unique NFT collection, Edenhorde, that is a vertically integrated gaming DAO. It is not a subsidiary but a core part of Beam. With plans to create a maximum of 8,800 NFTs, excluding future collections and spin-offs, Edenhorde offers an innovative approach to collective world-building and intellectual property development within Web3.

Use case of Beam (BEAM)

The BEAM token is the lifeblood of the Beam network. It operates as the essential crypto asset that users need to interact with the many features offered by Beam.

Fundamentally, $BEAM is used for the following purposes:

  1. Gas token: It serves as the native crypto asset on the sovereign Beam network. Each transaction on the Beam network requires BEAM to cover gas fees, which includes any game-related transaction on the Beam network.
  2. Validation: BEAM is required to validate transactions on, and to secure, the Beam network. There is ongoing in work to enable token holders who do not wish to validate themselves to delegate their BEAM tokens to validators and thereby contribute to validating transactions and securing the network.
  3. Governance: BEAM tokenholders can participate in governance and propose certain changes to the ecosystem, including governing the community treasury and certain mutable smart contract systems.
  4. Payment on Sphere: BEAM is used as a means of payment for NFTs on the Sphere marketplace.

 

Merit Circle Utility

The BEAM token is available on multiple blockchain networks to improve accessibility for users. The native token contract addresses are:

  • Avalanche (C-Chain): 0x62D0A8458eD7719FDAF978fe5929C6D342B0bFcE
  • Beam Network (Avalanche subnet): Wrapped BEAM (WBEAM) – 0xD51BFa777609213A653a2CD067c9A0132a2D316A
  • Ethereum (ERC-20): 0x62D0A8458eD7719FDAF978fe5929C6D342B0bFcE
  • Binance Smart Chain (BSC): 0x62D0A8458eD7719FDAF978fe5929C6D342B0bFcE

 

This multi-chain approach makes the BEAM token more accessible by being available on networks with different features and fees. The various contract addresses allow BEAM to be used by chain evangelists and users who prefer particular networks.

MC Token Distribution

Initially, the total supply was set at 1 billion $MC tokens. However, this number has decreased since the token generation event and continues to change. Here’s how the tokens were originally distributed:

  • Seed Sale: 14.06% of the total token supply
  • Public Sale: 4.10% of the total token supply
  • Binance Launchpool: 1.25% of the total token supply
  • Community Incentives: 30.19% of the total token supply
  • Team and Advisors: 20.00% of the total token supply
  • DAO Treasury: 16.40% of the total token supply
  • Staking Rewards: 10.00% of the total token supply
  • Retroactive Rewards: 4.00% of the total token supply

 

Merit Circle Token

 

After the MIP-28 and MIP-29 passing, all MC tokens are migrated to the BEAM token with a 1:100 conversion ratio. The only way to receive BEAM is by either acquiring or migrating MC tokens. 

What Are the Major Changes in Distribution?

  • Team and Advisors: Now split into Core Contributor Tokens totaling 7.17B BEAM, with a new vesting schedule of a 4-year cliff.
  • Community Incentives: The majority, 20B BEAM tokens, have been burned.
  • Public Sale: Fully distributed and part of the circulating supply.
  • Staking Rewards: Fully distributed and part of the circulating supply.
  • Binance Launchpool: Fully distributed and part of the circulating supply.
  • Retroactive Rewards: Fully distributed and part of the circulating supply.

BEAM Airdrop

At this time there are no intentions of Beam for airdropping Beam. This is because there are mainly three reasons why it was not proposed:

  1. The BEAM token is meant to replace the MC token and not coexist with it. With an airdrop, the tokens would have the characteristics of being two distinct tokens, rather than what is meant to be achieved here (replacement by way of upgrading and renaming).
  2. It is difficult to conduct a fair and accurate airdrop in this scenario, as MC tokens are more or less constantly changing hands. It is a risk that tokens might change hands after a snapshot is conducted and the outcome could be that someone who acquired MC after the snapshot was taken does not become eligible to receive BEAM tokens and vice versa.
  3. Conducting an airdrop of this character implies incurring substantial costs (including transaction costs).

 

Merit Circle Token Migration

Where to buy and sell Beam (BEAM)?

What do we think about Beam (BEAM)?

Beam wants and (is probably) going to be the big player in the GameFi world or the now small but keeps getting bigger Web3 gaming space. It doesn’t want to be a cog in the system, it wants to be the wheel.

 

The Beam, with its own Beam network, could mature to an industry giant. With a treasury that will run for decades and at this level of management will be getting into the billions in the next 5 years, it would be understandable to expect the project to succeed.

By putting several eggs in different baskets all spread out in the gaming niche of web3, we can see that the players and developers are using Beam and Beam. They are not just building games; they could be crafting the future of interactive entertainment.

As a partner we don’t only hope they will succeed but are invested (mentally) in their success. Let’s all cheer for Beam.

How can someone get involved in the Beam DAO?

There are a few main ways community members can get involved with Beam:

  • Hold the BEAM governance token – this provides voting rights on proposals
  • Participate in discussions on the governance forum
  • Stake BEAM tokens to earn yield and governance power
  • Apply for grants to fund blockchain gaming related projects
  • Work with the core contributors as a core team member or contractor
Beam Logo

Beam (BEAM) conclusion

Beam is a forward-thinking decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that is creating the next generation of gaming and earning. But with its own sovereign blockchain, Beam, a more than substantial treasury, successful strategic investments, and a suite of developer and player-focused products, Beam is well-positioned to become a major player in the decentralized gaming space.

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