-The Beacon Chain is the name of the original proof-of-stake blockchain that was launched in 2020. It was created to ensure the proof-of-stake consensus logic was sound and sustainable before enabling it on Ethereum Mainnet. Therefore, it ran alongside the original proof-of-work Ethereum. The Beacon Chain was a chain of 'empty' blocks, but switching off proof-of-work and switching on proof-of-stake on Ethereum required instructing the Beacon Chain to accept transaction data from execution clients, bundle them into blocks and then organize them into a blockchain using a proof-of-stake-based consensus mechanism. At the same moment, the original Ethereum clients turned off their mining, block propagation and consensus logic, handing that all over to the Beacon Chain. This event was known as [The Merge](/roadmap/merge/). Once The Merge happened, there were no longer two blockchains. Instead, there was just one proof-of-stake Ethereum, which now requires two different clients per node. The Beacon Chain has become the consensus layer, a peer-to-peer network of consensus clients that handles block gossip and consensus logic, while the original clients form the execution layer, which is responsible for gossiping and executing transactions, and managing Ethereum's state. The two layers can communicate with one another using the Engine API.
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