A researcher from the Ethereum Foundation proposed a consensus layer upgrade proposal called "Beam Chain", which is referred to as "Ethereum 3.0" by the community

PANews reported on November 12, according to The Block, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake proposed a new consensus layer upgrade proposal "Beam Chain" at the Devcon conference, which is referred to by the community as "Ethereum 3.0". The proposal aims to achieve faster block times, lower validator stake requirements, on-chain snarkization and improvements in quantum security. The core of Beam Chain lies in introducing technologies such as zkVM to significantly enhance the scalability of the Ethereum mainnet without relying on Layer 2 solutions.

Doug Colkitt, founder of Ambient Finance stated that localizing zkEVM could completely eliminate gas limits and allow nodes only need to verify snarks theoretically achieving unlimited scalability for L1. Despite this, the proposal may lead to further centralization of block construction.

Drake emphasized that final implementation of Beam Chain requires community consensus and called it his "most ambitious proposal so far." He previously resigned from an advisory position due to potential conflicts of interest with EigenLayer.