Provide a concise narrative that clearly states each of (a)–(e) below.
Beam solves the problem that consumer applications, games, and frontier-technology products cannot run economically on general-purpose blockchains that charge volatile gas fees and force developers to build custom wallet, asset, and identity tooling from scratch. Beam addresses this with a sovereign, EVM-compatible Layer 1 built on the Avalanche technology stack, paired with an SDK, a self-custodial wallet, a bridge, a swap interface, and a marketplace, so developers ship blockchain-enabled products without operating their own infrastructure. Beam began in 2021 as Merit Circle, a play-to-earn gaming DAO, and expanded in 2025 beyond gaming into artificial intelligence, trading, compute, and finance.
(Source: Beam, Beam Docs, Terms of Use, Beam is evolving)
Beam funds ongoing development and operations from the Beam Foundation treasury, which held $148,570,485 in non-BEAM assets and 8,403,297,145 BEAM as of 30 June 2026. The Foundation deploys those assets across four activities. It runs a public grants program that pays approved projects milestone-based funding of up to $1,000,000. It incubates and accelerates ecosystem companies, including Dreamcash and Sophon. It operates Beam Ventures, an Abu Dhabi Global Market venture fund targeting $150 million alongside the Booster accelerator. It funds validator rollout, where validators and delegators earn transaction fees, protocol fees, and grants for securing the network. The Foundation publishes quarterly treasury reports covering each of these.
(Source: Q2 2026 Treasury Report, Beam Treasury Dashboard, Beam Foundation Grants, Beam, Beam Ventures, Horizon)
Beam Network is an open-source sovereign Layer 1 blockchain running the Avalanche technology stack. It became a standalone Layer 1 on 16 December 2024 through the Avalanche Etna upgrade and ACP-77, and moved from permissioned proof-of-authority to permissionless proof-of-stake through the Horizon upgrade in early 2025. Validators secure the network by staking at least one ERC-721 Node Token and at least 20,000 BEAM, and holders who do not run nodes delegate BEAM and Node Tokens to validators. The Beam ecosystem spans users, gamers, validators, tokenholders, infrastructure providers, and developers, all centered on the BEAM token.
(Source: Beam Docs, Horizon, Beam Nodes, Messari Beam profile)
BEAM performs four functions. It pays gas on every Beam Network transaction. It secures the network, since validators must stake at least 20,000 BEAM to validate and propose blocks and holders may delegate BEAM to validators instead of running nodes. It carries governance rights over mutable features of Beam protocols and over checks and balances on Beam DAO-adjacent entities. It serves as a means of payment across decentralized applications, games, and smart contract systems in the Beam ecosystem, including Node Token minting fees. The BEAM contract address on Ethereum and BNB Smart Chain is 0x62D0A8458eD7719FDAF978fe5929C6D342B0bFcE.
(Source: What is BEAM?, BEAM to validate and secure the Beam Network, Node Token, $BEAM Token)
Beam operates a hybrid control surface. BEAM governance approvals can upgrade or change Beam protocols and are enforceable against DAO-adjacent entities whose governing documents are made compatible with BEAM governance. Beam Foundation and its subsidiaries remain sovereign entities that tokenholders do not control or manage. Tokenholders instead exert three mechanisms of accountability. Onchain, BEAM holders give feedback and cast programmatic vetoes against specified Foundation decisions. Offchain, tokenholders hold co-approval and veto rights over specified decisions and can seek enforcement against a Foundation group company or its personnel through an Emergency Supervisor following an Adverse Event. Through transparency requirements, the Foundation must keep its governing documents, treasury reports, and asset addresses publicly available. The structure follows the BORG framework for DAO-adjacent entities.
(Source: Governance, DAO-adjacent entities)
For each existing entity: Labs/DevCo (e.g., Founder, CEO, CTO, COO), Foundation (e.g., President, Executive Director, CFO, COO), and DAO / onchain governance leadership (if applicable) list the: (a) full names, (b) official titles, (c) and prior experience of key team members. For any non-existent entity, explicitly mention it does not exist. External links may be included but they will not factor into the score.
Full Name | Entity | Official Title | Prior Experience |
|---|---|---|---|
Marco van den Heuvel | Labs / DevCo | Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer | Founded the Axie 420 Scholarship program in 2021, which became Merit Circle and then Beam. Previously worked at Presearch and founded blockchain service startups including CMMC Start. (Beam Team, Gate Learn, Interview with Marco van den Heuvel) |
Tommy Quite | Labs / DevCo | Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer | Co-founded Flow Ventures, which incubated the project. Joined from a venture capital background. (Beam Team, Interview with Marco van den Heuvel, RootData) |
Mark Borsten | Labs / DevCo | Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Beam Ventures | Joined from a venture capital background and now leads strategy for the Beam Ventures fund in Abu Dhabi. Also builds Sophon. (Interview with Marco van den Heuvel, Abu Dhabi to launch a $150mln gaming fund, RootData) |
Thale Sonnemans | Labs / DevCo | Chief Operating Officer | Beam has not publicly disclosed Thale Sonnemans's prior experience. (Beam Team) |
Beam operates through three distinct surfaces. Beam Interface is a Cayman Islands company that operates the Beam Sites, including Beam Bridge, Beam Swap, the Beam Companion App, and onbeam.com. Beam Foundation is a Cayman Islands memberless non-profit foundation company. BEAM DAO is the tokenholder governance body, which has no officers and no named leadership. The named operating executives below lead the Beam operating group. | Labs / DevCo | ||
Not publicly disclosed | Foundation | Not publicly disclosed | Not publicly disclosed |
Beam Foundation is a memberless Cayman Islands foundation company with no shareholders. Its Bylaws and Memorandum and Articles of Association define the roles of Directors, Multisig Signers, Supervisors, Emergency Supervisors, and Grant Committee members, and require tokenholder approval for their appointment and removal. Beam Foundation has not published the names of the individuals holding those roles. | Foundation | ||
Not applicable | DAO / Onchain Governance | Not applicable | Not applicable |
BEAM DAO has no officers, directors, or named leadership. Governance is exercised directly by BEAM tokenholders through Beam Improvement Proposal votes on Snapshot, with discussion on the Beam community governance forum. | DAO / Onchain Governance |
Provide a structured description of the DAO's governance, powers, and economic rights. If a DAO does not exist, state so. Address the lettered items below. Even if there is no DAO, there must be an answer to (d).
BEAM DAO exists. Tokenholders govern through Beam Improvement Proposal votes held on Snapshot at vote.onbeam.com, with proposal discussion on the Discourse forum at gov.onbeam.com. The governing token is BEAM.
BEAM DAO owns no intellectual property. The Beam documentation, governance repositories, and Beam Nodes staking contracts are published under open-source licences on the BuildOnBeam GitHub organization, with the documentation site carrying a GPL v3.0 notice. Beam Interface owns or licenses the content and marks on the Beam Sites. Beam Foundation owns the LayerZero-derived omnichain contracts it authored. BEAM DAO holds no title to codebases, repositories, trademarks, or brands, and exercises influence over protocol code only through governance approvals enforceable against DAO-adjacent entities.
(Source: Beam Docs, Terms of Use, Beam Omnichain Tokens, DAO-adjacent entities)
The stamped BEAM Governance Constitution grants BEAM governance two categories of authority. It approves upgrades and changes to Beam Protocols. It issues approvals enforceable against DAO-adjacent entities whose governing documents are compatible with BEAM governance. Tokenholders who held BEAM on the relevant voting chain before a BIP Vote was created may participate in that vote. Each BEAM carries one equal vote unless the relevant smart contract system provides otherwise. Quorum is 1% or more of circulating BEAM supply. Ordinary BIP Votes pass on more than 50% of BEAM votes cast. A user must hold at least 25,000 BEAM to post a proposal in the proposal category, the proposal must sit for a minimum 2-day review period, and the user submitting it as a BIP vote must hold at least 750,000 BEAM.
Under the stamped Beam Foundation Bylaws, tokenholders use BEAM Approval to veto or block specified Foundation Group-controlled smart contract transactions, Director appointments and removals, Multisig Signer appointments and removals, Supervisor appointments and removals, material governing-document amendments, and certain large grants. Tokenholders also appoint and remove Grant Committee members by BEAM Approval and appoint Emergency Supervisors who enforce Foundation rules after unresolved Adverse Events.
The BeamToken contract allows an admin to designate minters and burners. The Migrator contract was assigned as minter and burner to the destination and source contracts to execute the MC-to-BEAM conversion, as approved under MIP-29 and audited by Quantstamp. Snapshot records show tokenholders approved the MC-to-BEAM migration under MIP-28 and MIP-29 and approved the transition to Beam-branded governance surfaces under MIP-31.
(Source: Stamped Beam governance constitution, Beam governance proposals, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, MIP-28, MIP-29, MIP-31, Beam Token Quantstamp audit)
Beam operates a staking mechanism that confers economic rights rather than additional governance rights. Holders stake at least 20,000 BEAM together with at least one ERC-721 Node Token to run a validator, or delegate BEAM and Node Tokens to a validator, and earn transaction fees, protocol fees, and grants in return. Each validator accepts a maximum of 1,000 Node Tokens and 50 million BEAM. Staking BEAM confers no incremental voting weight. BEAM governance weight is determined by BEAM held on the relevant voting chain before a BIP Vote is created, with each BEAM carrying equal votes.
(Source: Beam Nodes, Horizon, Stamped Beam governance constitution, Avalanche Is Minting $500K Worth of Beam Node Tokens)
BEAM tokenholders hold no right to revenue distributions and no ownership claim on the treasury. The Beam Treasury Dashboard states that treasury assets held by Beam Foundation and its subsidiaries are not controlled by tokenholders and are not held on their behalf. The stamped Memorandum and Articles of Association prohibit any payment or transfer of Foundation income or property by dividend, bonus, or profit distribution to members, directors, or supervisors as such, apart from authorized remuneration for services, and prohibit amending the distribution-restriction clauses so that Foundation assets benefit members.
Tokenholder economic rights are limited to two channels. Validators and delegators earn transaction fees, protocol fees, and grants for securing the network. All tokenholders benefit from supply reduction, since BEAM used for Node Token minting is sent to a burner contract and Node Tokens minted in other currencies are swapped into BEAM and burned. Tokenholders exercise governance rights over the treasury only through the veto and approval mechanisms in the Foundation Bylaws, not through any entitlement to distributions. MIP-29 established that BEAM assumed MC's position as governance token and Beam Network native token.
(Source: Beam Treasury Dashboard, Stamped Beam Foundation memorandum and articles, Node Token, Horizon, MIP-29)
BEAM DAO is an unincorporated tokenholder body with no legal personality and therefore has no dissolution procedure. Dissolution authority attaches to the Beam Foundation. The stamped Bylaws require BEAM Approval before the Foundation may be wound up, liquidated, or dissolved, or before substantially all Foundation assets may be transferred outside the Foundation Group, except in insolvency or a bona fide reorganization. The stamped Memorandum and Articles provide that the Foundation is wound up when the Board delivers notice attaching confirmation of BEAM Approval, and that surplus assets on a winding up may not be distributed to members, directors, supervisors, or emergency supervisors.
(Source: Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, Stamped Beam Foundation memorandum and articles)
For the Primary Foundation do the following independently. If an entity does not exist, state that explicitly. Items (a)–(f) apply only if that entity exists; state explicitly that the entity doesn't exist. Definitions: The primary Foundation and DevCo can be explained as those entities which are directly involved in the issuance of the native token at launch.
Beam Foundation is a Cayman Islands non-profit foundation company limited by guarantee without share capital, formed under the Foundation Companies Act. It is memberless, meaning it has no owners or shareholders and issues no shares or similar instruments. Because it has no members and is non-profit, it cannot distribute dividends, and any assets it owns may be deployed solely towards the growth and development of the Beam ecosystem within the scope set by law and its governing documents. Beam Foundation replaced the MC Purpose Trust as the primary DAO-adjacent entity under MIP-31. Its Bylaws, Memorandum of Association, and Articles of Association were filed and registered with the Cayman company register and published to GitHub in October 2024.
(Source: DAO-adjacent entities, Stamped Beam Foundation memorandum and articles, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, MIP-31, Beam Foundation Governing Documents)
Beam Foundation owns the Beam-branded contracts it authored on top of the audited LayerZero omnichain contract set, including ExtendedONFT721, ExtendedONFT721Upgradeable, MinterONFT721, and MinterONFT721Upgradeable. Beam Foundation operates the Beam Docs, governance, beam-token, and Beam Nodes staking contract repositories under the BuildOnBeam GitHub organization, published under open-source licences with the documentation carrying a GPL v3.0 notice. Beam Interface, a separate Cayman Islands company, owns or licenses the content and marks on the Beam Sites.
Beam Foundation operates through subsidiaries that the Beam documentation collectively terms the Foundation Group. Beam Ventures is the principal disclosed subsidiary, a frontier-technology fund established by Beam Foundation in the Abu Dhabi Global Market that targets $150 million and operates the Booster accelerator, formed in collaboration with WWVentures. Beam Foundation has not published a complete register of its subsidiaries.
(Source: Beam Omnichain Tokens, Beam Docs, Terms of Use, DAO-adjacent entities, Beam Ventures, ADGM announcement, Abu Dhabi-based Beam Ventures launches with $150 million fund)
Beam Foundation holds no power over BEAM DAO governance. It cannot create, block, or execute BIP Votes, and BEAM DAO holds no power to manage the Foundation.
Beam Foundation holds custody and deployment authority over the treasury. The Beam Treasury Dashboard states that Beam Foundation and its subsidiaries hold treasury assets for Beam ecosystem growth and that those assets are not controlled by tokenholders or held on their behalf. The stamped Bylaws allow the Foundation to determine the appropriate use of its general funds, including blockchain tokens, subject to its governing documents and to any smart contract limitations. Tokens allocated from Beam DAO may be earmarked for a specific purpose and subject to programmatic smart contract limits. Most Foundation Group assets must be held in multisigs or other smart contracts, and Foundation Group asset addresses must be displayed publicly as soon as commercially practicable.
Foundation authority is bounded by tokenholder checks. The Bylaws require annual and quarterly treasury reports, permit tokenholders to veto certain large grant decisions by BEAM Approval, permit tokenholders to appoint and remove Grant Committee members by BEAM Approval, and permit Emergency Supervisors appointed by BEAM Approval to enforce Foundation rules after unresolved Adverse Events.
Beam Foundation holds no unilateral token administration power over BEAM supply. BEAM has a fixed maximum supply that no company or individual can increase.
(Source: Beam Treasury Dashboard, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, DAO-adjacent entities, What is BEAM?)
Beam Foundation and Beam Interface are separate legal entities. Beam Foundation has not publicly disclosed any shareholding, board appointment right, contractual control right, or other formal mechanism by which it directs the decision-making of Beam Interface. The two entities share the Beam brand, the same product surfaces, and overlapping operating leadership.
(Source: Terms of Use, DAO-adjacent entities, Beam)
Beam Foundation exercises contract and administrative authority through multisigs, and that authority is constrained by tokenholder veto rights rather than by unilateral Foundation discretion. The stamped Bylaws require most Foundation Group assets to sit in multisigs or other smart contracts and require Foundation Group asset addresses to be published. Tokenholders may use BEAM Approval to veto or block specified Foundation Group-controlled smart contract transactions, appointments and removals of Directors, Multisig Signers, and Supervisors, material governing-document amendments, and large grants. BEAM Approval is also required before wind-up or a transfer of substantially all assets outside the Foundation Group, except in insolvency or a bona fide reorganization.
For token administration specifically, MIP-29 required tokenholder approval to deploy the migration smart contract. The Quantstamp audit records that BeamToken allows an admin to designate minters and burners, and that the Migrator contract was assigned as minter and burner to the destination and source contracts to execute conversions. Beam Foundation has not publicly disclosed the signer counts or thresholds of its multisigs.
(Source: Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, MIP-29, Beam Token Quantstamp audit)
Beam Foundation and its subsidiaries hold the treasury for Beam ecosystem growth. As of 30 June 2026 the treasury was valued at $148,570,485 excluding BEAM and held 8,403,297,145 BEAM valued at $11.82 million across Ethereum, Beam Network, BNB Smart Chain, and Avalanche. The treasury declined from $174,679,179 on 31 December 2025 to $158,283,119 on 31 March 2026 to $148,570,485 on 30 June 2026. Treasury BEAM holdings declined from 9,926,852,982.50 tokens on 31 December 2025 to 8,893,740,968.42 on 31 March 2026 to 8,403,297,145 on 30 June 2026. Beam Foundation burned 40,339,617 BEAM during Q4 2025 and burned no BEAM during Q1 2026.
The stamped Bylaws require a public grant program, permit grants to be paid in BEAM or other blockchain tokens, require a Grant Committee of at least three members, require conflict recusals, require grant funds to be allocated to publicly identified Grant Program multisigs, and require quarterly grant reports covering funding activity, grantees, operations, and relevant onchain transactions. The public grants program funds approved projects up to $1,000,000 on a milestone basis.
No mechanism directs protocol-controlled resources, treasury assets, fees, revenue, rewards, or token distributions to equityholders of Beam Foundation, because the Foundation is memberless and has none. The stamped Memorandum and Articles prohibit dividends, bonuses, and profit distributions to members, directors, or supervisors as such, apart from authorized remuneration for services.
(Source: Q2 2026 Treasury Report, Q1 2026 Treasury Report, Q4 2025 Treasury Report, Beam Treasury Dashboard, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, Stamped Beam Foundation memorandum and articles, Beam Foundation Grants)
For the Primary DevCo do the following independently. If an entity does not exist, state that explicitly. Items (a)–(f) apply only if that entity exists; state explicitly that the entity doesn't exist. Definitions: The primary Foundation and DevCo can be explained as those entities which are directly involved in the issuance of the native token at launch.
No DevCo was involved in the issuance of BEAM. BEAM came into existence solely through the Migrator smart contract, which BEAM tokenholders authorized under MIP-28 and MIP-29 and which converted MC into BEAM at a fixed 1:100 ratio. Beam Interface is the operating company for the Beam user interfaces and is the closest analogue to a DevCo, and the answers below describe that entity.
(Source: MIP-28, MIP-29, Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ, Terms of Use)
Beam Interface is a Cayman Islands company. It is the counterparty to the Beam Terms of Use and operates the Beam Sites, comprising Beam Bridge at bridge.onbeam.com, Beam Swap at swap.onbeam.com, the Beam Companion App, and onbeam.com and its sub-URLs. The Terms of Use state that the owner of the Sites is based in the Cayman Islands and that all matters relating to the Sites are governed by Cayman Islands law, with disputes resolved by London Court of International Arbitration arbitration seated in the Cayman Islands before a single arbitrator.
(Source: Terms of Use)
The Terms of Use state that all source code, databases, functionality, software, website designs, information, audio, video, text, photographs, and graphics on the Beam Sites, together with the trademarks, service marks, and logos contained in them, are owned or controlled by Beam Interface or licensed to it. Beam Interface reserves all rights not expressly granted and requires prior written consent for use of the Marks. Beam Interface does not own the Beam Network protocol code, the Beam documentation repositories, or the Beam Nodes staking contracts, which sit under the BuildOnBeam GitHub organization under open-source licences. Beam Interface has not publicly disclosed any subsidiary entities.
(Source: Terms of Use, Beam Docs, Validator Management System Documentation)
Beam Interface holds no power over BEAM DAO governance, the Beam Foundation treasury, protocol-controlled resources, token administration, or reward parameters. The Terms of Use state that Beam Interface has no custody or control of any crypto-assets users interact with, that it cannot transmit, contribute to transmitting, or retrieve crypto-assets for or on behalf of anyone, that it is not an exchange, broker, lender, borrower, fiduciary agent, or virtual asset service provider, and that it has no oversight, involvement, or control over user transactions. The Terms of Use further state that Beam Interface does not control and cannot change the blockchains or smart contracts accessible through the Sites, and that its interface is one of multiple means of accessing them.
(Source: Terms of Use)
Beam Interface holds no disclosed power over Beam Foundation. Beam Foundation is memberless with no shareholders, so Beam Interface holds no equity interest in it. The Beam Foundation governing documents vest appointment and removal rights over Directors, Multisig Signers, Supervisors, and Grant Committee members in the Board subject to BEAM Approval, and grant no such rights to Beam Interface. Beam Interface has not publicly disclosed any contractual arrangement giving it influence over Beam Foundation decision-making.
(Source: DAO-adjacent entities, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, Terms of Use)
Beam Interface holds no pause, upgrade, or governance-executor authority over Beam Network or the BEAM token contract. The Terms of Use state that Beam Interface does not control and cannot change the blockchains or smart contracts accessible through its Sites, that the Sites do not interact with those contracts, and that the Sites conduct no transactions on any user's behalf. The only authority the Terms of Use reserve to Beam Interface is the right to modify, restrict access to, or discontinue any part of the Sites at its sole discretion and without notice, which is an interface-level right rather than a protocol-level one.
(Source: Terms of Use)
No governance-approved, contractual, or programmatic mechanism directs protocol-controlled resources, treasury assets, fees, revenue, rewards, or token distributions to Beam Interface, its equityholders, contributors, or other participants. Beam Network transaction fees flow to validators and to burn contracts. Node Token minting fees are burned or swapped into BEAM and burned, and the 7.5% Node Token secondary-sale fee follows the same path. The Beam Foundation Bylaws direct grant funds to publicly identified Grant Program multisigs under Grant Committee oversight, with tokenholder veto rights over large grants. Beam Interface has not publicly disclosed any service agreement, management fee, or token allocation from Beam Foundation or from BEAM DAO.
(Source: Terms of Use, Gas Token, Node Token, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws)
Disclose launch and initial supply details in a single initial allocation schedule covering the token's launch.
The MC token generation event minted 1,000,000,000 MC on 4 November 2021, equivalent to 100,000,000,000 BEAM at the 1:100 conversion ratio. Initial circulating supply when MC listed on Binance was 42,592,000 MC, equivalent to 4,259,200,000 BEAM. All remaining supply at launch was locked and released under the category schedules in item (f). By the time the migration opened on 26 October 2023, cumulative burns under MIP-7 and MIP-20 had already reduced maximum supply from 1,000,000,000 MC to 647,136,750 MC as of March 2023. Cumulative burns since inception total 40,305,762,659 BEAM.
(Source: Binance Research Merit Circle, ICO Drops Merit Circle, MIP-29, Beam Treasury Dashboard)
BEAM had no independent token generation event. BEAM is a 1:100 redenomination and rename of the Merit Circle MC token, approved by tokenholders under MIP-28 and MIP-29 and executed from 26 October 2023. The launch allocation schedule below is therefore the MC token generation event of November 2021, expressed on the 1,000,000,000 MC base, with the BEAM-equivalent figure at the 1:100 conversion ratio.
Tokenholders separately approved USDC 10,000 from the MC DAO treasury under MIP-29 to cover the smart contract audit cost of the migration.
(Source: Binance Research Merit Circle, Breaking all Balancer records, Messari Merit Circle profile, MIP-29)
No fixed offering price was set. The public sale ran as a Balancer Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool on Copperlaunch over 72 hours from 2 November 2021, with the pool weighting declining over time so that the market set the clearing price. The pool opened at a starting price of $1.00 per MC on a $1 billion fully diluted valuation, and the first buy orders immediately pushed the price above that level. The sale cleared approximately 41 million MC at an average price of $2.58 per MC, raising $105,576,956 from roughly 3,900 participants. Expressed in BEAM at the 1:100 ratio, the average clearing price was $0.0258 per BEAM. The migration itself set no price, since MC converted to BEAM at a fixed 1:100 ratio with no consideration paid.
(Source: Breaking all Balancer records, Messari Merit Circle profile, Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ)
The ticker is BEAM.
(Source: What is BEAM?, $BEAM Token)
Total and maximum supply is 58,470,184,687 BEAM and circulating supply is 51,300,184,687 BEAM, which is 87.74% of total supply. Supply is capped and deflationary. No company or individual can arbitrarily mint more BEAM, and BEAM could only ever come into existence through conversion of MC, which itself had a fixed maximum supply. Supply falls through three burn channels. BEAM sent to burn smart contracts leaves circulation permanently and reduces both circulating and maximum total supply. Beam protocols direct part of protocol fees to burn contracts, and part of the gas fee on each transaction is burned. All BEAM paid to mint Node Tokens is sent to a burner contract, Node Tokens minted in USDC, ETH, or AVAX are swapped into BEAM and burned, and the 7.5% Node Token secondary-sale fee is burned when paid in BEAM. Beam Foundation has also historically bought BEAM on the open market and burned it. Cumulative burns total 40,305,762,659 BEAM. Beam Foundation burned 572,020,002 BEAM in Q3 2025, 40,339,617 BEAM in Q4 2025, and no BEAM in Q1 2026. Live supply figures require a re-pull at publication.
(Source: Tokenomist Beam, What is BEAM?, Burning BEAM, Gas Token, Node Token, Beam Treasury Dashboard, Q3 2025 Treasury Report, Q4 2025 Treasury Report, Q1 2026 Treasury Report)
Five of the eight launch categories carried lock-ups, running on a four-year schedule from October 2021.
Initial contributors voluntarily extended their own lock beyond the contractual schedule. On 24 February 2023 they locked 71,700,000 MC, equivalent to 7,170,000,000 BEAM, for the entire four-year lock-up period, held in the multisig at 0x97173277FED329ee844BAfa44D7719ad372a7150.
The BEAM unlock schedule ended in 2025 and BEAM is now fully unlocked, with no scheduled future unlocks. The migration window itself ran for 12 months from 26 October 2023 to 26 October 2024. MIP-30 sought to extend that window from 12 months to 15 months and failed, with more No votes than Yes votes. As of October 2024, 97.1% of all MC tokens had migrated to BEAM.
(Source: Binance Research Merit Circle, Locking up the majority share of initial contributor tokens, Tokenomist Beam, Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ, MIP-30, Three years of Merit Circle)
Address each of the following sub-items based on the project's airdrop status. If a sub-item does not apply to the project's situation, state that explicitly.
Planned but not yet executed airdrop
Not applicable. Beam has no planned airdrop of BEAM.
(Source: Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ, BEAM distribution)
Executed airdrop
Not applicable. Beam has never conducted a distributive airdrop of BEAM. Beam expressly rejected structuring the MC-to-BEAM transition as an airdrop for three stated reasons. BEAM was designed to replace MC rather than coexist with it, and an airdrop would have created two distinct tokens rather than an upgrade and rename. A fair and accurate airdrop was impracticable because MC changed hands constantly and holders acquiring MC after any snapshot would have been excluded. An airdrop of that scale would have incurred substantial transaction costs.
Every BEAM in existence was minted by the Migrator contract in exchange for MC burned by its owner at a 1:100 ratio, on a permissionless opt-in basis over the 12 months from 26 October 2023. The Migrator source code is published at github.com/Merit-Circle/beam-token, the ERC-20 migration contract is deployed at 0x8fb4223b7751243ae14987d6fc9e71d06aaf6ddf on Ethereum, and the BEP-20 migration contract is deployed at the same address on BNB Smart Chain.
One technical exception applies. MC was the native gas asset of Beam Network and could not be converted by contract there, so Beam executed a network upgrade on 31 October 2023 that renamed the native asset to BEAM and performed a one-to-one state rewrite across existing balances on that chain. That event redenominated existing balances at the same 1:100 ratio and distributed no new value to any recipient.
(Source: Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ, MIP-29, Beam Token Quantstamp audit)
Supplemental notes
The MC token generation event included a Retroactive Rewards allocation of 4.00% of launch supply, equivalent to 4,000,000,000 BEAM, paid to the earliest backers from the Axie 420 Scholarship period. That allocation was a launch category with a defined release schedule rather than an airdrop. Beam has not published per-address recipient data for it.
(Source: Binance Research Merit Circle)
No airdrop planned or conducted
Applicable. Beam has never conducted an airdrop to date and does not plan to execute one.
(Source: Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ, BEAM distribution)
Projects must disclose all material terms of market-making arrangements that affect token liquidity. If the project has no agreements or deals with market makers, state that explicitly; doing so earns full credit. For each market maker, include in a table:
If the project has no agreements or deals with market makers, state that explicitly; doing so earns full credit. If no native tokens were loaned or allocated to market makers, state that explicitly; cash/fiat retainers or fees are not required for this item.
Beam has not publicly disclosed any market-making arrangement affecting BEAM liquidity. No BEAM allocation or loan to a market maker appears in the Beam Foundation quarterly treasury reports, which itemize treasury composition across liquid crypto assets, NFTs, and venture investments, or in the Beam Foundation governing documents, which require public disclosure of Foundation Group asset addresses. The Bylaws require Directors and Multisig Signers to use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize or mitigate adverse market impacts to BEAM price and liquidity when selling Foundation Group BEAM, including through over-the-counter transactions where reasonably and commercially practicable, and this is the only liquidity-management obligation Beam has published.
(Source: Q2 2026 Treasury Report, Beam Treasury Dashboard, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws)
Projects must disclose all material terms of centralized or decentralized exchange listings that affect token liquidity. For each listing, include in a table:
If the project has no agreements or deals with CEX or DEX, state that explicitly; doing so earns full credit; cash/fiat fee amounts are not required for this item.
Disclose all prior token sales by the Project — including fundraising rounds, any material OTC sales to investors, and any discounted market-maker sales. For each sale, provide:
If no prior sales occurred, state that explicitly (e.g., "No prior fundraising, OTC, or discounted MM sales have occurred.").
Beam has conducted no token sale of BEAM itself. All BEAM was created by conversion of MC through the Migrator contract at a fixed 1:100 ratio with no consideration paid. Beam has not publicly disclosed any material OTC sale to investors or any discounted sale to a market maker. The Beam Foundation Bylaws require Directors and Multisig Signers to use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize adverse market impacts when selling Foundation Group BEAM, including through over-the-counter transactions where reasonably and commercially practicable, and Beam has not disclosed any specific transaction executed under that provision.
The December 2024 Beam Node Token mint was a sale of ERC-721 Node Tokens rather than a sale of BEAM. Node Tokens priced at $1,250 during the first week from 17 December 2024 and $3,750 thereafter, payable in USDC, BEAM, ETH, or AVAX. All BEAM paid was burned, and proceeds in other currencies flowed to an autonomous contract that bought and burned BEAM, so the mint reduced BEAM supply rather than distributing it.
(Source: Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, Beam Node Token Mint instructions, Node Token)
If any, list prior exploits or incidents that directly affected the token, token supply, tokenholder balances, token contract, minting controls, burn mechanics, or custody of token supply. This question is not asking about general protocol, application, or smart contract exploits unless the incident directly affected the native token itself. If no prior incidents, state this explicitly (e.g., "No exploits affecting tokenholders or protocol funds as of YYYY-MM-DD").
No exploit has affected Beam protocol funds, the BEAM token contract, the Beam Network validator set, or the Beam Foundation treasury as of 9 September 2026. Two adjacent incidents affected BEAM holders and Beam Network users without compromising Beam protocol funds, and both are disclosed below.
Incident 1 of 2
2024-02. Ethereum. A single external holder's wallet. No Beam-controlled component was involved.
Incident 2 of 2
2026-04-09. BNB Chain, with cross-chain exposure to Beam Network. The AethirOFTAdapter bridge contract for the third-party ATH token. Beam Node reward claims were temporarily paused as a precaution.
Incident 1 of 2
A wallet-drainer phishing site tricked one holder into signing a malicious transaction that transferred their BEAM balance to the attacker. The attack targeted the holder's private wallet approval and did not involve any Beam smart contract, interface, or infrastructure.
Incident 2 of 2
An attacker exploited the AethirOFTAdapter cross-chain bridge adapter contract on BNB Chain to drain ATH tokens, then bridged the proceeds to Tron through Symbiosis Finance. ATH is Aethir's token and is distributed as part of Beam Node rewards, which is the sole connection to Beam.
Incident 1 of 2
The attacker drained over 180,000,000 BEAM from one address, notionally worth over $5 million, and sold the tokens for approximately 1,629 ETH worth roughly $4.5 million. No Beam protocol funds were lost. No other holder was affected by this transaction.
Incident 2 of 2
No loss of Beam protocol funds and no loss of BEAM. PeckShield initially estimated approximately 423,000 ATH, worth over $400,000, drained during the exploit. Aethir subsequently confirmed actual user losses below $90,000. Aethir confirmed the main ATH supply on Ethereum was fully intact. A small group of ATH holders and liquidity providers on Beam were affected.
Incident 1 of 2
No protocol remediation applied, because no Beam component was compromised. Scam Sniffer documented the incident in its February 2024 phishing report and published the attacker addresses through its Dune dashboard.
Incident 2 of 2
Aethir disconnected all compromised bridge contracts on detection, patched the vulnerable contracts, and began a broader review of related bridge code. Aethir coordinated with Binance, Upbit, Bithumb, and HTX to blacklist tracked wallets, and engaged ZeroShadow for forensic analysis. Beam temporarily paused Node reward claims and handled reimbursement for the affected group of ATH holders and liquidity providers on Beam directly with the Aethir team.
Incident 1 of 2
Resolved as to Beam. The stolen funds were not recovered and no compensation was paid, because the loss fell on a private holder rather than on the protocol.
Incident 2 of 2
Contained and remediated by Aethir, with compensation committed to affected users. Beam Node reward claims resumed.
Incident 1 of 2
(Source: February 2024 phishing report coverage, Crypto Scam Alert)
Incident 2 of 2
(Source: Aethir halts bridge exploit, Aethir Adapter Exploit technical postmortem, Aethir Contains ATH Bridge Exploit, Beam Nodes Delegation Dashboard)
Describe material risk factors across the three categories below. Each category includes prompts to address at a minimum.
(a) Regulatory, Legal & Tax Risks — Describe how evolving laws and regulations could affect the project by answering, at a minimum, questions like:
Impact of Regulatory Change on TGE and Listings: (If applicable) How could evolving or conflicting laws and regulations affect your ability to complete the TGE, deliver tokens to purchasers, and list or maintain the token on trading venues in key jurisdictions?
Entity-Level Regulatory Impact: (If applicable) How could regulatory or legal changes impact your core entities (Foundation, DevCo, DAO, affiliated service providers), including enforcement actions, licensing requirements, or forced changes to structure or operations?
Tokenholder Tax Treatment: (If applicable) What uncertainties exist around how tokenholders may be taxed, and make clear that tokenholders are responsible for understanding their own tax obligations?
Jurisdictional & User Access Restrictions: (If applicable) If the project restricts access for certain jurisdictions or user types (e.g., U.S. persons, sanctioned countries, retail vs. professional), what are those restrictions and what risks do they create for users and for the project?
(b) Protocol, Technology & Security Risks — Describe risks to network and contract reliability, correctness, and safety by answering, at a minimum, questions like:
Bugs and Design Flaws: (If applicable) What bugs, design flaws, or implementation errors could exist in your core protocol code, smart contracts, and any bridges, rollups, or oracles that you depend on, and how could these lead to loss of funds or disruption of the protocol?
Security Measures & Their Limitations: (If applicable) What security measures have you taken (audits, formal verification, bug bounties), and what types of failures might these measures still fail to detect or prevent?
(c) Token Economics, Unlocks & Incentive Risks — Describe how the token's economic design and supply schedule could affect holders by answering, at a minimum, questions like:
Critical Economic Assumptions: (If applicable) Which economic assumptions (e.g., staking yields, fee revenue, liquidity incentives, MEV capture, demand for blockspace) are critical for protocol security, utility, and governance, and what happens if those assumptions fail?
Governance Control over Monetary Policy & Rewards: (If applicable) To what extent can governance change monetary policy, fee parameters, or reward allocations (e.g., inflation rate, treasury flows, incentive programs), and how could such changes adversely affect tokenholders?
Impact of regulatory change on TGE and listings
BEAM completed its distribution in 2023 and the 12-month migration window closed on 26 October 2024, so no future token generation event or delivery obligation is exposed to regulatory change. Listing risk remains live. BEAM trades on Binance, Kraken, Bitget, Crypto.com, CoinSpot, and BitMart, and exchange-level reassessment of BEAM's classification can restrict access in individual jurisdictions. Kraken already lists BEAM as unavailable in Canada. Wealthsimple's disclosure records that it monitors statements by Canadian and other securities regulators on whether BEAM is a security or a derivative, and that material technical risks including code defects, security breaches, hacking, and forking form part of its ongoing assessment. Beam's own materials state that the regulatory status of cryptographic tokens and distributed ledger technology is unsettled in many jurisdictions, that predicting how governments will implement or apply regulation is difficult, and that such changes may have a materially adverse effect on users.
(Source: Terms of Use, Kraken BEAM listing notice, Wealthsimple BEAM disclosure, Beam token migration Tutorial and FAQ)
Entity-level regulatory impact
Beam concentrates regulatory exposure in three entities across three jurisdictions. Beam Interface is a Cayman Islands company subject to Cayman law, with disputes resolved by LCIA arbitration seated in the Cayman Islands. Beam Foundation is a Cayman Islands foundation company formed under the Foundation Companies Act, and changes to that statute or to Cayman regulatory practice on foundation companies would force structural change. Beam Ventures operates in the Abu Dhabi Global Market and is subject to ADGM fund licensing, which conditions the fund's ability to raise and deploy the targeted $150 million. Beam's materials state that the smart contracts accessible through the Sites have not been reviewed, approved, endorsed, or registered with any regulator, and that their creators hold no licence to provide legal, financial, accounting, investment, or other advice or services. Enforcement action against any Foundation Group company would trigger the Adverse Event and Emergency Supervisor mechanisms in the Bylaws.
(Source: Terms of Use, DAO-adjacent entities, Stamped Beam Foundation memorandum and articles, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, Beam Ventures, ADGM announcement)
Tokenholder tax treatment
The tax consequences of validator activity, staking, and Node Token minting vary by jurisdiction and may be adverse. Beam states that users accept the potential tax consequences in their jurisdiction of residence, assume all risk of conducting their own due diligence and investigation into those consequences, and may not construe anything on the Beam Sites as tax, financial, or legal advice. Tokenholders are solely responsible for understanding and meeting their own tax obligations.
(Source: Terms of Use)
Jurisdictional and user access restrictions
Beam restricts access on three axes. Users must be 13 years of age or older, must not be barred from using the Sites under applicable law, and must use the Sites only for personal use. Users must not be subject to national or international sanctions, must not be located or ordinarily resident in any country or region subject to comprehensive country-wide or region-wide sanctions or embargo by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, or their home country government, and must not be designated on any list of prohibited or restricted parties maintained by those authorities. Beam makes no claim that the Sites or their content are accessible or appropriate outside the Cayman Islands, and users accessing from elsewhere do so on their own initiative and bear responsibility for local law compliance. Beam reserves the right to restrict users from accessing parts or all of the Sites at any time. These restrictions create access risk for affected users and enforcement risk for Beam if screening proves inadequate. The Beam protocol itself is permissionless, so restrictions bind the interfaces rather than the underlying network.
(Source: Terms of Use, Privacy Policy)
Beam's technology risk concentrates in the proof-of-stake transition, the validator economics that sustain it, and the cross-chain surfaces that connect it to other networks.
The Horizon upgrade moved Beam Network from permissioned proof-of-authority to permissionless proof-of-stake, and that transition made network security dependent on Beam Nodes, BEAM staking, Node Tokens, and validator and delegator reward mechanics operating together. Beam Network also became a standalone Layer 1 through the Avalanche Etna upgrade and ACP-77 in December 2024, which introduced a delivery dependency between Beam Foundation and Avalanche Foundation. Validators must stake at least one Node Token and at least 20,000 BEAM, meet hardware and bandwidth requirements, and pay an Avalanche P-Chain continuous fee initially set at 1.33 AVAX per month, so validator economics depend in part on the AVAX price and on Avalanche fee policy that Beam does not control. Each validator caps at 1,000 Node Tokens and 50 million BEAM.
Slashing exposes validators and delegators to reward loss when uptime is insufficient or a validator is marked malicious or dishonest. Validators need at least 80% uptime in an epoch to receive full rewards, and rewards scale linearly below that threshold. The ValidatorManager, StakingManager, and Native721TokenStakingManager contracts handle validator registration, delegation, and reward distribution, and a defect in any of them would affect the reward pipeline for the whole validator set.
Beam's Terms state that staking, validator activity, and Node Token minting expose users to bugs, exploits, malware, denial-of-service attacks, consensus-based attacks, sybil attacks, griefing, smurfing, spoofing, forks, and blockchain network failures, that transactions on Ethereum, Avalanche, Arbitrum One, Base, and Beam Network are irreversible, and that no remedy will be available from any person for resulting losses. Beam also warns that forks may produce persistent alternative versions of the protocol and that users must independently manage that risk.
Audit coverage is partial. The Quantstamp audit of the Beam Token migration contracts reported five findings, three fixed and two acknowledged, with zero high-severity and zero medium-severity findings. Beam Foundation's own contracts built on top of the audited LayerZero omnichain contract set have not been formally audited, and Beam marks those contracts as unaudited in its documentation.
The April 2026 Aethir bridge incident demonstrated the practical cross-chain risk. An attacker exploited the AethirOFTAdapter contract on BNB Chain, a Beam contract appeared among the compromised set, Beam Node reward claims paused temporarily, and a small group of ATH holders and liquidity providers on Beam required separate reimbursement handling. That incident did not touch BEAM or Beam protocol funds, but it shows that third-party reward flows into Beam Nodes carry contagion risk that Beam does not directly control.
(Source: Terms of Use, Horizon, Requirements to Run a Validator, Slashing, Validator Management System Documentation, Beam Omnichain Tokens, How Beam Nodes pushed the boundaries of the Avalanche Network, Beam Token Quantstamp audit, Aethir halts bridge exploit, Messari Beam profile)
BEAM carries no unlock overhang. The vesting schedules from the 2021 token generation event ran to completion, the unlock schedule ended in 2025, and BEAM is fully unlocked with circulating supply of 51,300,184,687 against total and maximum supply of 58,470,184,687. The remaining 7,170,000,000 BEAM gap between circulating and total supply corresponds to the initial contributor tokens locked in the multisig at 0x97173277FED329ee844BAfa44D7719ad372a7150 in February 2023. The principal supply risk is therefore treasury distribution rather than scheduled dilution.
Beam Foundation holds 8,403,297,145 BEAM as of 30 June 2026, equal to roughly 14.4% of total supply, and can deploy those tokens for ecosystem growth without tokenholder approval except where a specific Bylaws veto applies. Foundation BEAM holdings have declined steadily, from 13,520,575,930.46 tokens on 31 March 2025 to 11,434,499,605 on 30 June 2025, 10,798,489,036.06 on 30 September 2025, 9,926,852,982.50 on 31 December 2025, 8,893,740,968.42 on 31 March 2026, and 8,403,297,145 on 30 June 2026. The Bylaws require Directors and Multisig Signers to use commercially reasonable efforts to minimize or mitigate adverse market impacts to BEAM price and liquidity when selling, including through over-the-counter transactions where reasonably and commercially practicable, but that is a best-efforts obligation rather than a hard constraint.
Burn activity has slowed materially. Beam Foundation burned 200,421,263 BEAM in Q1 2025, 113,957,240 BEAM in Q2 2025, 572,020,002 BEAM in Q3 2025, 40,339,617 BEAM in Q4 2025, and no BEAM in Q1 2026. The deflationary offset to treasury distribution has therefore weakened even as the treasury continues to sell.
Incentive continuity is the other exposure. Validators and delegators earn transaction fees, protocol fees, and grants, so network participation depends on those flows remaining sufficient to cover validator costs, including the AVAX-denominated P-Chain continuous fee. The 80% uptime threshold and linear reward scaling below it mean marginal validators face reward loss that compounds the economic pressure. Node Token minting demand, which drives the burn mechanism, is itself a function of expected validator returns, so a decline in reward flows would weaken both validator participation and the burn.
Beam Foundation's own accountability framework constrains conduct rather than supply. The Bylaws require annual and quarterly treasury reports, public display of Foundation Group asset addresses as soon as commercially practicable, public grant-program reporting, and ethical trading standards prohibiting insider trading, insider dealing, market abuse, and market manipulation by the Foundation Group and by persons involved in Foundation Group operations.
(Source: Tokenomist Beam, Beam Treasury Dashboard, Locking up the majority share of initial contributor tokens, Q2 2026 Treasury Report, Q1 2026 Treasury Report, Q4 2025 Treasury Report, Q3 2025 Treasury Report, Q2 2025 Treasury Report, Q1 2025 Treasury Report, Stamped Beam Foundation bylaws, Horizon, Requirements to Run a Validator, Slashing, Node Token)
This Token Transparency Filing is provided for general informational purposes only and does not verify or warrant the accuracy of individual answers.
