9. Glossary

agent

A process, instance of beamer-agent, running on behalf of a liquidity provider and tasked with

  • fulfilling requests

  • defending own claims

  • challenging dishonest claims

  • collecting users’ deposits and fees

An agent only communicates with the Beamer smart contracts, never with other agents.

agent fee

The fee paid in token being moved, rewarding the liquidity provider. Variable and currently set to max(5e18, 0.1% of token amount transferred). Collected by the agent.

Beamer App

The web application that one can use to transfer tokens between supported L2 chains.

challenge game

The part of the Beamer protocol that is concerned with making sure only the agent that fulfilled the request will be able to withdraw the user’s deposit and the fees.

During the challenge game, the claimer and the challenger take turns increasing their stake in the game, until one of them decides to give up or initiate L1 resolution.

If L1 resolution is triggered, the winner of the game is determined by the outcome of L1 resolution.

If L1 resolution is not triggered, the winner of the game is determined by the amount of staked native L2 tokens: whoever has most tokens wins.

challenger

An agent that decided to challenge an existing claim and therefore started the challenge game.

challenge stake

The total amount of native L2 token, typically ETH, that is staked from both sides in the challenge game, i.e. the sum of challenger stake and claimer stake.

challenger stake

The amount of native L2 token that the challenger staked during the challenge game.

claim

A declaration issued by an agent to a Beamer smart contract that states that the agent fulfilled a specific request. Note that a claim can be made by anybody, regardless of whether the request was actually fulfilled or not.

Agents have an incentive to challenge dishonest claims because by initiating and winning the challenge game they win the claimer stake.

claim stake

The amount of native L2 token that the claimer needs to stake in order to make a claim.

claimer stake

The amount of native L2 token that the claimer staked during the challenge game, or the initial claim stake.

L1 resolution

The process by which the winner of the challenge game is determined if one of the game participants decides to escalate the game to the L1 chain. This involves providing the proof of request fulfillment to the Beamer smart contracts that then take care of communicating that information to the target L2 chain via the L1 chain.

liquidity provider

An entity providing funds to an agent or several agents. The funds are used to fulfill incoming requests. Liquidity providers earn a fee for each fulfilled request.

LP

See liquidity provider.

protocol fee

The fee paid in token being moved, intended to support further development of the Beamer protocol. Variable and currently set to 0% of token amount transferred. Collected by the smart contract.

request

An action performed by a user wishing to transfer tokens from the source L2 chain to the target L2 chain. A request is typically created via the Beamer App, but can also be made by manually interacting with the Beamer smart contracts.

A requests comprises

  • the source L2 chain ID

  • the target L2 chain ID

  • the source token address

  • the target token address

  • the amount of tokens to be transferred

When making a request, the user is required to deposit the appropriate amount of tokens, which are then locked until the request is either filled or expired.

request validity period

The amount of time that the request if valid for. If no agent fulfills the request within the validity period, the request is considered expired and the user’s deposit can be withdrawn by the user who made the request.

user’s deposit

The amount of tokens that is locked with the Beamer’s smart contract on the source chain. The tokens are locked until the corresponding request is fulfilled and an agent sucessfully claims and withdraws the tokens.

PPM

Percentage in parts per million as unit.