Beam’s Second Hard Fork Activated BeamHash III at Block 777,777

Beam completed its second hard fork at block 777,777 on June 28, 2020, moving its proof-of-work network from BeamHash II to BeamHash III and activating protocol support for confidential assets, Lelantus Mimblewimble and one-sided payments.

The event was a consensus change, not simply a wallet update. Nodes and miners that continued enforcing the old rules would no longer follow the upgraded network. Beam had therefore distributed its Eager Electron 5.0 software in advance and told users, mining pools and exchanges to update before the activation height.

What changed at block 777,777

Beam’s April 22, 2020 announcement fixed the activation point at block 777,777 and projected that the chain would reach it on June 28. The project listed four breaking changes: the new mining algorithm, confidential-asset support, Lelantus Mimblewimble support and one-sided-payment support. Its operator guide repeated the height and instructed mining operations to configure an automatic switch to BeamHash III.

The mining change altered the work miners had to perform to produce valid blocks. Beam described BeamHash III as a design intended to use GPU memory bandwidth more fully and reduce the relative advantage of specialized hardware. That was the project’s engineering objective, not an independently demonstrated guarantee that the network would remain free of ASICs or FPGAs. The published specification defined the new solution format, but hardware economics and private optimizations could not be established from the fork record alone.

The other changes widened what the base protocol could represent and how wallets could transact. Confidential assets allowed additional asset types to be issued on Beam while concealing transaction amounts through the network’s privacy design. Lelantus Mimblewimble supplied privacy infrastructure used by those features. One-sided payments reduced the need for sender and recipient wallets to coordinate interactively, moving the experience closer to a conventional send-to-address payment.

Activation was not adoption

The fork mattered because all four changes became part of the network’s active consensus rules on one precisely identifiable block. It also tested coordination among wallet users, node operators, miners, pools and exchanges. Beam’s own guidance warned that wallets older than version 5.0 would stop working after the fork height, although users could upgrade later to regain access to their funds.

That operational boundary is important. A successful activation shows that upgraded participants continued building a chain under the new rules. It does not show how many users upgraded before the deadline, how much hash power changed software on time, or whether every exchange immediately enabled deposits, withdrawals or confidential assets.

Beam’s pool-and-exchange guide was especially cautious on the asset feature. It said confidential-asset support was disabled by default in wallets used by those operators, told pools to leave it disabled and asked exchanges interested in enabling it to contact the team. The protocol capability therefore should not be confused with instant exchange support, token issuance or liquid markets.

How completion was verified

The surviving public record does not expose a dependable independent explorer page for block 777,777. Completion is instead supported by three aligned records. Beam’s official announcement and technical operator guide established the predetermined height, software requirement and feature set. On June 28, the project reported that the network had moved to BeamHash III and was stable. A June 29 contemporaneous report described the fork as completed at block 777,777, and a Beam community update published July 2 recorded the same date and height.

That evidence supports the narrow conclusion that the scheduled consensus transition occurred on June 28, 2020. It does not independently audit the privacy guarantees of the activated features, prove the absence of a competing chain, or measure post-fork mining concentration.

Later context

No later product adoption or market outcome is needed to establish the June 28 event. Subsequent Beam releases should be treated as separate milestones, not projected backward into what Eager Electron 5.0 activated at block 777,777.