What Components make up the Beacon Chain?
The Beacon Chain is made up of several key components:
- Validators: These are the nodes that participate in the network’s consensus process and are responsible for creating new blocks. Validators are chosen based on the amount of ether (ETH) they have “staked” as collateral.
- Shard chains: The Beacon Chain manages the shard chains that make up the Ethereum 2.0 network. Shard chains are smaller chains that run in parallel to the main chain, allowing for a more efficient and decentralized system.
- Merkle Trees: These are data structures that are used to organize and verify the data that is stored on the network.
- Networking: The Beacon Chain uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) networking protocol to maintain communication between the different nodes on the network.
- Data storage: The Beacon Chain uses a distributed database to store the state and transactions of the network.
What is the Beacon Chain?
The Beacon Chain is a fundamental component of the Ethereum 2.0 network, which is designed to improve the security and scalability of the Ethereum network and it was the last major upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain.