Beam successfully hard forks for the first time

Beam, a privacy currency built on the Mimblewimble protocol, successfully hard-forked for the first time on Thursday at block height 321,321, as previously announced in their roadmap. Beam’s inaugural fork introduces a new hashing algorithm based on EquiHash, called Beam Hash II, and a new minimum transaction fee. This is the first of two forks planned for Beam ($BEAM).

In an AMA with Messari, Beam CEO Alexander Zaidelson said the rationale behind both planned forks was to:

“...signal to ASIC developers that there is no point in starting to work on an ASIC before the second fork.”