What Are Privacy Coins?

## What Is Beam (BEAM)?

BEAM is a confidential decentralized finance ([DeFi](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary/defi)) platform that runs on a combination of two blockchain protocols (LelantusMW and Mimblewimble). 

In the early years of the industry, transactions with public-blockchain cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin ([BTC](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/)) were thought to be untraceable. With developments in blockchain analysis, it became clear that transactions can actually be traced back to the senders, posing a great threat to users' privacy. 

To solve this issue, BEAM came up with innovative ways of increasing the anonymity of transactions, address balances and user identities.

Beam runs on the Mimblewimble protocol and was launched in March 2018.


### Who Are the Founders of BEAM? 

Some of the leading team members of Beam include Alexander Zaidelson, Alex Romanov and Amir Aaronson.

Alexander Zaidelson is the project’s CEO. He started his career as a software developer and is an advisor to several startup projects. He has also founded a P2P file-sharing company Nareos. 

Alex Romanov, the CTO, has worked with large teams on several complex projects. 

Besides working on Beam, Amir Aaronson, the COO, has co-founded several technological companies.


#### What Makes Beam Unique? 

Beam allows financial counterparties to make safe, stable and reliable transactions. This helps eliminate the problem of user data mismanagement, keeping the system cleaner and more secure. Beam’s blockchain was built on the C++ programming language from scratch. 

User addresses are kept confidential at all times and are never disclosed to any third parties. Users have total access and control over their privacy, deciding who can access their information and what they are allowed to see. 

Beam supports custom transactions of different types, such as [escrow](https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/glossary#escrow), atomic swaps and time-locked ones.


#### How Many Beam (BEAM) Coins Are There in Circulation? 

Beam has a maximum supply of 262,800,000 tokens, of which 81,970,000 are in circulation as of February 2021.


### How Is the Beam Network Secured? 

Beam uses the Equihash proof-of-work algorithm which was chosen for its capacity to handle large amounts of data. 


### Where Can You Buy BEAM? 

BEAM can be traded on several major cryptocurrency exchanges, including:



*   [Binance](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/)
*   [BitForex](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/bitforex/)
*   [Gate.io](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/gate-io/)
*   [Hotbit](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/hotbit/)
*   [CoinEx](https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/coinex/)

Learn more about how to buy Bitcoin with our own [guide](https://coinmarketcap.com/how-to-buy-bitcoin/).


Beam

Firo (FIRO), formerly known as Zcoin, is a cryptocurrency that focuses on being private digital cash. It created the Lelantus privacy protocol which allows users to burn their coins and redeem them later for brand new ones that do not have any transaction history.

Prior to Lelantus, it was also the first cryptocurrency to code and launch a practical implementation of the Zerocoin protocol which became one of the most prevalent privacy protocols in use, prior to it being replaced by Sigma and then Lelantus after cryptographic flaws were discovered in the Zerocoin protocol in 2019.

Firo

Grin

Ravencoin is a digital peer-to-peer (P2P) network that aims to implement a use case specific blockchain, designed to efficiently handle one specific function: the transfer of assets from one party to another. Built on a fork of the Bitcoin code, Ravencoin was announced on Oct. 31, 2017 and released binaries for mining on Jan. 3, 2018 with what is called a fair launch: no premine, ICO or masternodes. It was named in reference to a TV show Game of Thrones.

Ravencoin

Cortex

Komodo

BitShares Blockchain is a decentralized “Blockchain as Organization” (BaO); an industrial-grade decentralized open source platform built to run high-performance financial technology operations. It represents the first decentralized autonomous decentralized community that enables its core utility token (BTS) holders to decide the Blockchain future direction in order to develop and maintain a wide range of decentralized financial technology products, features and functions. BitShares Blockchain is a Blockchain that permanently records financial technology operations between different Blockchain accounts and facilitates a wide range of access controls across BitShares Blockchain user financial means.

BitShares Blockchain is a technology that supports the digital generation entrepreneurs, investors, and developers with a common interest in building and participating in free market solutions by leveraging the power of globally decentralized consensus and decision making. Consensus technology has the power to do for economics what the internet did for information. It can harness the combined power of all humanity to coordinate the discovery and aggregation of real-time knowledge, previously unobtainable. This knowledge can be used to more effectively coordinate the allocation of resources toward their most productive and valuable use.

BitShares looks to extend the innovation of the Blockchain to all industries that rely upon the internet to provide their services. Whether its banking, stock exchanges, lotteries, voting, music, auctions or many others, a digital public ledger allows for the creation of distributed autonomous companies (or BaO) that provide better quality services at a fraction of the cost incurred by their more traditional, centralized counterparts. The advent of (BaO) ushers in a new paradigm in organizational structure in which companies can run without any human management and under the control of an incorruptible set of business rules. These rules are encoded in publicly auditable open source software distributed across the computers of the companies’ shareholders, who effortlessly secure the company from arbitrary control. BitShares does for business what bitcoin did for money by utilizing distributed consensus technology to create companies that are inherently global, transparent, trustworthy, efficient and most importantly profitable.

BitShares has went through many changes and has done its best to stay on top of Blockchain technology. BitShares is using Consensus as the mechanism by which organized people decide upon unitary rational action. While not considered technology in the traditional since, consensus “technology” is the basis of democratic governance and the coordination of free market activity first coined by Adam Smith as the “Invisible Hand.” The process of consensus decision-making allows for all participants to consent upon a resolution of action even if not the favored course of action for each individual participant. Bitcoin was the first system to integrate a fully decentralized consensus method with the modern technology of the internet and peer-to-peer networks in order to more efficiently facilitate the transfer of value through electronic communication. The proof-of-work structure that secures and maintains the Bitcoin network is one manner of organizing individuals who do not necessarily trust one another to act in the best interest of all participants of the network. The BitShares ecosystem employs Delegated Proof of Stake in order to find efficient solutions to distributed consensus decision making.

BitShares

Dock is building a gateway to Web3 by providing simple solutions for businesses and developers to build, manage, and present digital Verifiable Credentials and decentralized identities using blockchain.

Dock provides credentialing technology that can be used to create cryptographically secure and instantly verifiable digital credentials, including workforce certificates, academic achievements, identity documents, and KYC checks.

Since 2017, Dock has been building Decentralized Identity and Verifiable Credentials (VC) technology, which will act as a gateway to Web3 in the future. We have been collaborating with organizations to adapt and innovate in the Web3 ecosystem by helping them understand the true ownership of their data and making their documents, certificates, and credentials become digital, tamper-proof, and instantly verifiable. Web3 is about data ownership and by using Dock’s technology, individuals can now truly own and control their most important documents and regain control over their data.

Dock

PERL.eco

QuarkChain

Akropolis is a company that operates an Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol that seeks to provide an autonomous financial ecosystem for saving and growing wealth, including through borrowing and lending. To do so, it offers a series of products including AkropolisOS, a framework for developing for-profit decentralized autonomous organizations, Sparta, a platform for uncollateralized lending, and Delphi, a yield farming aggregator and tool for dollar-cost averaging.

The project uses an ERC-20 token, AKRO, for protocol governance across its suite of products.

Akropoli was first announced in March 2018, launching on the Ethereum mainnet in June 2020.

Akropolis

Verge is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency and blockchain that seeks to offer a fast, efficient, decentralized payments network that improves upon the original Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. It includes additional privacy features including integrating the anonymity network Tor into its wallet, called vergePay, and providing the option of sending transactions to stealth addresses.

The project describes itself as community-driven, relying on volunteers and priding itself on being open source.

Verge was first launched in October 2014 as DogeCoinDark, a fork of Peercoin (PPC). In February 2016, it was renamed Verge in order to rebrand for easier mass-market adoption and to distinguish itself from Dogecoin (DOGE), with which it has no direct connection. The project is now based on the Bitcoin source code.

Verge

ForTube, previously known as the Force Protocol, describes itself as a suite of distributed crypto-finance service protocols that runs on an open-source blockchain. Its main aim is to offer crypto-finance solutions to developers through its software development kit (SDK) and application programming interfaces (APIs) for decentralized application (DApp) development.

The platform offers solutions for cross-platform asset transactions, cross-chain communications, crypto-asset-backed stablecoin insurance, token board insurance, and on-chain payments. The Force Protocol project is a decentralized protocol layer that is developed and managed by the Force Protocol Foundation Ltd.

ForTube launched its decentralized finance (DeFi) service on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) in September 2020.

ForTube offers many advantages, including flexible support of globally popular cryptocurrencies that provide higher yield combinations and an upgraded algorithm and ledger structure that significantly reduces gas costs. It also has a robust technical framework with more secure smart contracts.

ForTube

pNetwork

Bluzelle is a decentralized storage network for the creator economy.

Bluzelle delivers high security, un-matched availability, and is censorship resistant. Whether you are an artist, musician, scientist, publisher, or developer, Bluzelle protects the intellectual property of all creators. Bluzelle is data storage, file storage, oracles, and more. Its is specific for NFTs and DeFi.

Bluzelle’s core products are all related to data and powered by its Tendermint Blockchain:

Bluzelle DB - a decentralized database for software developers to store information

Bluzelle Oracles - a truly decentralized pricing oracle that provides high speed and high security for Defi applications

Bluzelle Staking - where BLZ holders can currently stake their tokens and earn rewards for providing storage and pricing data.

Bluzelle

NULS

Bella Protocol is a platform that provides a suite of DeFi products designed to make crypto banking simpler and more accessible. The protocol aims to create a better user experience by eliminating the high fee and slow transaction issues that can affect some blockchain platforms — while simultaneously improving the user experience through its simplified DeFi smart portal.

Bella's smart pool feature allows users to access the best yields available in the DeFi market, while benefiting from nearly zero gas fees — since these are directly subsidized by the platform.

The project launched in September 2020 as the first project distributed via Binance’s Launchpool platform, and has secured investments from several prominent firms, including Arrington XRP Capital and Ledger Capital.

The protocol was built by the ARPA team, a blockchain-based layer 2 solution for privacy-preserving computation. The BEL token is an essential component of the Bella Protocol ecosystem and serves as both a reward token that allows holders to participate in the governance of the platform.

BEL can be used to farm fee rewards from the network, get exclusive discounts on Bella protocol products (such as its robo-advisor tool), and for earning staking rewards.

Bella Protocol

StaFi

Vertcoin

Serum is a decentralized exchange (DEX) and ecosystem that brings unprecedented speed and low transaction costs to decentralized finance (DeFi). (DeFi).

Serum is the only high-performant DEX designed around a fully on-chain central limit order book and matching engine. Ecosystem partners can compose with Serum’s on-chain orderbook to share liquidity and power their trading features for institutional and retail users.

In light of the popularity of DeFi and the growth of DEXes on Ethereum, users and developers are limited by high gas costs and slow transactions. Serum aims to resolve these traditional problems of DeFi, as well as issues of centralization, low capital efficiency, and liquidity segmentation.

The SRM utility and governance token enables users to receive discounts on protocol fees and voting rights; 100% of exchange fees flow back to SRM via buy-and-burn, staking rewards, and ecosystem grants.