What is Beam? A Beginner's Complete Guide

Picture hopping into your favorite online game, trading a rare skin, and cashing out winnings without leaving a single public breadcrumb. That’s the experience Beam aims to deliver. It fuses private payments, DeFi tools, and game economies into one privacy-first blockchain.

Bitcoin behaves like transparent digital gold. Beam feels more like a sealed vault built for players, traders, and builders who don’t want their balances or strategies exposed. It keeps transactions confidential by default, then layers in tools for decentralized finance and gaming.

At the core sits the Mimblewimble protocol, which compresses data so the chain stays lean while hiding sender, receiver, and amounts. Beam now extends that same privacy into gaming, pitching itself as the first blockchain where game studios and players can build secretly, settle instantly, and still tap DeFi-style liquidity.

Beam at a Glance

• Current Price: $0.027 (+2.3% on the day captured above)
• Market Cap: $1.47B (around the 218th largest crypto)
• Created: January 3, 2019 (mainnet launch)
• Founder: Alexander Zaidelson with the Beam development collective
• Purpose: Shielded transactions, confidential DeFi, and private gaming rails

What Problem Does Beam Solve?

Public blockchains expose almost everything. Anyone can look up a wallet, trace payments, front-run orders, and map an entire history of in-game purchases. That visibility invites surveillance, corporate tracking, and predatory trading.

Beam counters those issues by making confidentiality the default setting. Every transfer hides sender, receiver, and amount. Gaming items stay invisible to outsiders. Traders can run strategies without broadcasting them. Even with privacy, users can selectively share proofs when regulators or auditors require it.

How Does Beam Work?

Think of Beam as a ledger that proves math without exposing receipts. Once a transaction settles, the details vanish from public view, yet the network can still verify the totals add up.

Mimblewimble: The Privacy Engine

“Mimblewimble” nods to the Harry Potter spell that ties tongues. In practice, it bundles many transactions together so nobody can tell who sent what. Instead of posting “Alice sends Bob 10 BEAM,” the protocol only keeps cryptographic commitments that confirm balances remain valid. It’s like a bank teller stamping a stack of envelopes without opening any of them.

BeamHash III: Decentralized Mining

Beam relies on BeamHash III, a proof-of-work algorithm tuned for GPUs and hostile to ASIC domination. One-minute block times keep the network responsive, block rewards (currently 40 BEAM) shrink on a preset schedule, and the hashrate stays spread across thousands of community miners rather than a handful of industrial farms.

Lelantus-MW: Enhanced Privacy

Beam extends base Mimblewimble with Lelantus-MW, adding larger anonymity sets and one-sided payments. You can send funds to someone who isn’t even online, and outside observers still can’t prove who moved money or how much changed hands.

Contract Shaders: Smart Contracts with Privacy

Where Ethereum exposes every contract state, Beam’s Contract Shaders keep logic and data concealed. That unlocks confidential AMMs, lending markets, private governance votes, hidden auctions, and gaming mechanics that stay off the public radar.

Transaction Speed and Costs

Beam processes around 17 transactions per second with confirmation finality typically landing inside half an hour. Fees hover under a penny, and contract execution costs remain tiny compared with Ethereum gas charges.

Who Created Beam?

Israeli entrepreneur Alexander Zaidelson spotted Mimblewimble’s potential soon after an anonymous developer, “Tom Elvis Jedusor,” dropped the idea on a Bitcoin IRC channel in 2016. Zaidelson assembled cryptographers and systems engineers to turn that blueprint into a full chain focused on usability.

The Founding Story

Beam and its sibling project Grin launched from the same discovery. Grin pursued minimalism. Beam opted for polished wallets, optional audit trails, and enterprise-ready tooling. Mainnet went live on January 3, 2019, the same day Bitcoin celebrated its tenth birthday.

The Core Team

• Alexander Zaidelson – Founding CEO, strategic direction
• Alex Romanov – CTO, protocol design
• Beni Issembert – COO, partnerships and operations
• Vladimir Gelfer – VP Engineering, delivery management

Around 50 contributors spread worldwide ship updates. Early development relied on a treasury that received 20% of block rewards; that funding stream sunset in January 2024, pushing Beam toward community and ecosystem grants.

Evolution and Milestones

• 2018: Codebase takes shape, wallets reach public alpha
• January 2019: Mainnet launch with core Mimblewimble privacy
• 2020: Lelantus-MW rolls out, BeamX concept announced
• 2021: BeamX DeFi stack goes live alongside the governance token
• 2022: Strategic pivot toward gaming with the Beam Ventures fund
• 2023: Avalanche subnet integration for high-speed gameplay
• 2024: Wider gaming ecosystem launch and SDK rollouts

What Can You Build on Beam?

Beam targets builders who need programmability without sacrificing secrecy. It stretches from everyday payments to advanced gaming economies.

DeFi Applications

BeamX DAO Platform
BeamX lets the community govern upgrades, grants, and treasury decisions while individual votes stay hidden.

Token holders stake BEAM to earn BEAMX (past campaigns paid roughly 10–30% APR) and then vote on protocol changes, validator programs, and grant allocations without doxxing their ballots.

Confidential DEX (Decentralized Exchange)
Beam’s built-in AMM delivers Uniswap-style swaps with none of the on-chain transparency. Traders can move size without broadcasting positions, liquidity providers stay anonymous, and front-running bots lose their edge because transactions reveal nothing useful.

Atomic Swaps
Trustless cross-chain swaps connect Beam to major networks:

Users negotiate swaps peer-to-peer, sidestepping centralized exchanges and keeping custody at every stage.

Confidential Assets Platform
Beam lets anyone issue private tokens that inherit the chain’s privacy: stablecoins, corporate credits, wrapped assets, loyalty programs, or even charity vouchers. Each token stays segregated from BEAM supply while enjoying the same invisible ledger.

Private Lending Protocols
Several teams are building lending desks where borrowers can post collateral without revealing balances, lenders can earn yield without exposing positions, and liquidations remain hidden from competitors. The goal is institutional-grade privacy with DeFi composability.

NFTs & Gaming

Beam Gaming Ecosystem
Beam’s gaming push runs on an Avalanche subnet devoted to low latency and gasless user experiences.

Studios get sub-second settlement, players skip gas fees, and developers can keep gameplay logic secret so opponents can’t reverse engineer mechanics.

Merit Circle Partnership
Merit Circle, one of crypto gaming’s largest DAOs, partnered with Beam to incubate content and funding.

Together they formed a $150M Beam Ventures fund, onboarded 30+ titles (from mobile roguelikes to PC MMOs), and mobilized a six-figure gamer community to test and evangelize releases.

Confidential NFTs
Beam NFTs hide ownership, metadata, and trading activity unless holders opt to disclose it. That privacy appeals to collectors, competitive gamers, and brands experimenting with limited drops. Think secret weapon skins, members-only badges, or art collections you can prove you own without showing the whole world.

Gaming SDK Suite
Beam maintains SDKs for popular engines so studios can plug in blockchain features without rebuilding tech stacks.

Wallet overlays, NFT minting tools, marketplace modules, and analytics dashboards arrive in the package, helping teams launch economies fast.

Virtual Asset Management
Game designers can spin up private in-game currencies, hide player inventories from public explorers, run discreet player-to-player markets, or move assets across titles while keeping every transfer cloaked.

Enterprise Solutions

Corporate Privacy Solutions
Companies turn to Beam when supply chains, payroll, or B2B deals can’t be public.

Typical patterns include confidential supplier payments, employee compensation, and internal credit systems where only permissioned auditors can peek behind the curtain.

Healthcare Applications
Hospitals and research groups test Beam for anonymized patient data, compliant record keeping, private insurance claims, and drug traceability where patient identities must remain hidden but regulators still need proof of integrity.

Financial Services Integration
Banks and fintech shops experiment with private settlement rails, back-office reconciliation, cross-border remittances that protect client lists, and reporting workflows where auditors receive selective proofs instead of full transaction histories.

Beam's Financial Performance

Price History & Major Events

Launch to Peak (January–June 2019)
Beam opened near $0.70, sprinted to $1.20 within weeks, and hit an all-time high of $2.72 by late June thanks to Mimblewimble hype and a wave of privacy coin enthusiasm.

The Long Winter (2019–2020)
Post-peak, price slipped to $0.80, then $0.30, before the March 2020 COVID crash dragged it to $0.15. It clawed back to roughly $0.30 by year-end as builders kept shipping updates despite frosty market sentiment.

DeFi Bull Run (2021)
The broader crypto rally and BeamX announcements pushed BEAM to $0.60 in January and roughly $1.80 during DeFi summer. It hovered above $1.00 into December as staking and governance features matured.

Gaming Pivot & Consolidation (2022–2024)
The bear market knocked BEAM into the $0.10–$0.30 channel through 2022. News of the gaming pivot in 2023 steadied price around $0.15. By 2024, it oscillated between $0.008 and $0.027 while the market waited to see if the gaming plan would convert into real usage.

Market Metrics & What They Mean

Market Capitalization
A $1.47B market cap places Beam in mid-cap territory. It trails Monero by roughly 10x and Zcash by about 2x, suggesting upside if Beam’s gaming narrative resonates or downside if adoption stalls.

Trading Volume
Daily volumes around $18–29M signal moderate liquidity. Volume-to-market-cap sits near 2–5%, a healthy ratio for privacy coins, and activity spreads across more than 20 exchanges so no single venue controls liquidity.

Holder Distribution
Exact wallet counts stay private, but download figures and mining stats hint at 100K+ active wallets, several thousand miners, and a noticeably global footprint.

Supply Dynamics & Economics

Emission Schedule
Beam uses Bitcoin-style halvings with a shorter ramp. Rewards started at 100 BEAM per block, dropped to 50 after year one, halved again to 25 in year four, and will keep shrinking until the 262.8M cap is hit around year 133.

Treasury Model (Ended January 2024)
For its first five years, Beam diverted 20% of block rewards to fund development, marketing, and partnerships. That treasury amassed roughly 20M BEAM. With the subsidy finished, the project now leans on community initiatives and external funding.

BeamX Governance Token
BeamX sits on a 100M max supply, distributed through staking campaigns. Holders vote on proposals, receive slices of protocol fees, and influence long-term economics.

Staking Economics
Staking BEAM typically locks coins for multi-month periods in exchange for BEAMX rewards, governance access, and a share of network fees. Participation also signals commitment to the ecosystem even though Beam itself remains proof of work.

Major Upgrades

Eager Electron 5.0 (June 2020)

This release broadened Beam from a private currency to a platform.

Lelantus-MW Integration
Larger anonymity sets, one-sided payments, and improved usability boosted confidentiality without sacrificing verification.

Confidential Assets
Beam introduced privacy-preserving custom tokens, paving the way for stablecoins, wrapped assets, and private loyalty programs.

Atomic Swaps Enhancement
Cross-chain swaps became faster, easier, and compatible with more assets, lowering friction for non-custodial trading.

Fierce Fermion 6.0 (December 2020)

Beam planted its DeFi flag here.

BeamX Infrastructure
A WASM-based smart contract engine unlocked Turing-complete apps, cheap execution, and better tooling.

DeFi Building Blocks
AMM foundations, lending primitives, oracle hooks, and governance scaffolding arrived for developers to assemble financial products.

Mobile Improvements
Native iOS and Android apps with QR support, hardware wallet integrations, and simplified backups made Beam more approachable.

Groovy Gluon 7.0 (2021)

BeamX graduated to mainnet with full community governance.

BeamX Mainnet
Contracts deployed, the DAO began voting, DeFi protocols lit up, and BEAMX distribution scaled.

Bridge Infrastructure
Connections to Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon brought liquidity in and let wrapped BEAM circulate on other networks.

Web Wallet
A browser extension wallet bridged Beam to Web3, enabling lightweight onboarding and DApp interaction.

Hard Fork 8.0 - Gaming Evolution (2022–2023)

Beam shifted into gaming mode.

Avalanche Subnet
A dedicated subnet delivered sub-second finality, customizable fees, and throughput suited to fast-paced games.

Gaming Features
Support for rich NFTs, gasless transaction flows, player account abstraction, and cross-game asset frameworks rolled out.

SDK Releases
Unity, Unreal, JavaScript, and mobile kits gave studios plug-and-play tools to build on Beam.

How to Buy Beam

Best Exchanges to Purchase BEAM

Binance
Deep liquidity and multiple pairs make Binance the go-to venue.

Supports BEAM/USDT and BEAM/BTC with standard 0.1% fees (lower if you pay in BNB) and optional products like savings or futures for experienced traders.

Coinbase
A frictionless fiat ramp for US users.

You can schedule recurring buys, although the simple trade interface charges higher fees around 1.49%.

Gate.io
Offers a broad BEAM menu plus earn programs.

Pairs include BEAM/USDT, BEAM/BTC, and BEAM/ETH with 0.2% base fees and frequent staking or yield promos.

Bybit
Popular with advanced users who want leverage.

Expect 0.1% maker/taker costs and a derivatives interface geared toward active traders.

Decentralized Options
For maximum privacy, some choose on-chain swaps.

Wrapped BEAM trades against ETH and USDC via contract address 0x62d0a8458ed7719fdaf978fe5929c6d342b0bfce. Remember that wrapping and gas fees expose activity on Ethereum even if Beam itself stays private.

Storage Options

Beam Desktop Wallet (Recommended)
Full-featured software for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It offers encrypted local storage, optional light mode for quick syncing, direct DeFi access, and the highest privacy guarantees.

Beam Mobile Wallet
Ideal for quick payments.

It supports QR sends, contact lists, biometric locks, and a clean transaction history so you can spend privately on the go.

Beam Web Wallet
A browser extension connecting Beam to web apps.

Great for interacting with BeamX protocols from a laptop while keeping keys encrypted client-side.

Hardware Wallet Support
Native hardware integrations are limited right now. For cold storage, users commonly run the desktop wallet on an air-gapped machine, generate paper backups, or compose multi-signature setups while the team explores deeper hardware support.

Earning Opportunities

BEAM Staking
Stake BEAM to earn BEAMX and participate in the DAO.

Campaigns generally run about three months with reward rates that have floated between 10–30%, depending on demand.

Liquidity Provision
Providing liquidity on Beam’s DEX earns a share of 0.3% trading fees. Popular pools include BEAM/USDT and BEAM/BTC, and users should watch for impermanent loss during large price swings.

Gaming Rewards
Playing Beam-native titles can drop BEAM rewards, exclusive NFTs, or tournament payouts.

Studios often run beta tests, leaderboard contests, and P2E events that reward early adopters.

Risks and Considerations

Technical Risks

Mimblewimble Vulnerabilities
Mimblewimble is elegant but relatively young. Academic research continues probing it for flaws, and while Dandelion++ reduces network tracing, determined adversaries might still glean patterns. Future cryptographic breakthroughs—or quantum advances—could force protocol migrations.

Network Security Concerns
With a smaller market cap, Beam’s hashrate is easier to target than Bitcoin’s. A motivated attacker with a few million dollars’ worth of GPUs could threaten the network if mining centralizes. Rapid response would rely on a leaner core team.

Scalability Limitations
Beam’s base layer tops out near 17 TPS. Heavy gaming demand or complex DeFi contracts could strain throughput unless BeamX, the Avalanche subnet, and potential layer-two solutions absorb the load.

Smart Contract Risks
BeamX contracts haven’t endured the same multi-year, multi-billion-dollar stress tests as Ethereum’s DeFi stacks. Audit coverage is still growing, bug bounties are smaller, and composability adds unpredictability.

Investment Risks

Extreme Price Volatility
BEAM has already experienced a 99% drawdown and double-digit daily swings. Thin liquidity can magnify shocks, and leveraged traders can exacerbate selloffs—as seen during the 2022 Terra collapse when BEAM slid 67% in two days.

Regulatory Challenges
Privacy coins attract regulatory fire. Exchanges have delisted Beam in certain regions, FATF travel rule requirements pressure custodians, and countries like Japan and South Korea have enacted outright bans. Any major global crackdown could throttle liquidity overnight.

Adoption Barriers
Privacy tools demand extra education. Monero dominates mindshare, Beam’s wallets are fewer, merchant acceptance is sparse, and the gaming pivot risks confusing users who only want private payments.

Market Position Weaknesses
Beam slipped from the top 100 into the 200s by market cap, daily volume is down sharply from 2021 peaks, and some early community members disliked the gaming focus. Losing momentum would make it harder to attract developers and exchanges.

Centralization Concerns

Development Centralization
A handful of core developers still drive most commits, and treasury-era resource allocation gave the founding team outsized influence. Community governance is improving, but decentralizing decision-making remains a work in progress.

Mining Centralization Risks
ASIC resistance keeps mining open, yet pools still concentrate hashrate. Cheap power regions and industrial GPU farms can dominate unless hobbyist participation stays strong.

Governance Challenges
BeamX voting participation is low, top holders wield significant sway, and proposal thresholds can discourage small stakeholders. Even passed proposals occasionally lag in execution due to resource constraints.

Beam vs. Competitors

Comparative Analysis

Competitive Advantages

Technical Superiority
Beam’s Mimblewimble base keeps the chain lean, prunes old data through cut-through, eliminates long-lived addresses, and supports “scriptless scripts” for private smart contract logic.

Unique Market Position
It’s the only major privacy coin explicitly courting gaming studios while offering confidential DeFi and enterprise-friendly audit options. That blend differentiates it from pure privacy plays and public smart-contract platforms.

Developer Experience
Beam documents its SDKs well, releases updates frequently, and provides responsive community support—all helpful for onboarding studios that care more about tools than ideology.

Competitive Disadvantages

Market Position Challenges
Brand recognition lags far behind Monero and Zcash. Liquidity is thinner, exchange coverage is narrower, and merchant adoption is nearly nonexistent.

Technical Limitations
Traditional Mimblewimble requires interactive transactions, which complicates UX (Beam mitigates this with one-sided transactions but not all wallets support every feature). Privacy at the network layer isn’t as battle-tested as Monero’s approach, and Beam’s smart contracts, while private, are less flexible than Ethereum’s.

Ecosystem Maturity
Beam’s DApp count, developer pool, and community size trail older ecosystems. Tooling gaps still exist, and infrastructure like explorers or hardware wallet support remains comparatively sparse.

Investment Thesis: Bull vs. Bear Case

Bull Case: Why Beam Could Succeed

Gaming Market Opportunity
Gaming is bigger than film and music combined. Privacy features help competitive players protect strategies, shield inventories, and avoid targeted attacks. If Beam powers even 1% of the $180B gaming industry, it would rival or exceed today’s market cap.

Technical Excellence Recognition
As chains like Ethereum grapple with data bloat and front-running, Beam’s efficient ledger and private contracts could draw users seeking stealth DeFi. Enterprises navigating surveillance fatigue might also value optional auditability.

Undervaluation Opportunity
Trading 99% below its high, Beam may be priced for failure while still shipping upgrades. Treasury emissions are over, easing sell pressure, and the gaming pivot might not be reflected in current valuations if upcoming titles gain traction.

Institutional Privacy Demand
Corporations need compliant ways to handle sensitive data on-chain. Beam’s tools allow companies to prove compliance without revealing strategies, making it a potential bridge between privacy ideals and enterprise realities.

Bear Case: Why Beam Could Fail

Regulatory Extinction Risk
If top exchanges remove privacy coins to appease regulators, liquidity dries up and prices nosedive. Jurisdictions could criminalize privacy coin trading outright, repeating Japan’s 2018 ban that instantly erased value across the sector.

Competition Overwhelming
Monero owns privacy mindshare, Ethereum and Solana dominate DeFi, and dedicated gaming chains like Immutable X or Ronin already partner with marquee studios. Beam must convince each group to start over on a smaller chain.

Adoption Failure Spiral
Low usage discourages developers, which reduces new features, which scares exchanges, which shrinks liquidity—a loop that killed dozens of privacy projects from the 2017 era.

Technical Obsolescence
Zero-knowledge proofs are evolving fast. If mainstream chains nail private transactions and smart contracts with better throughput, Mimblewimble could look dated. Quantum advancements would also force Beam to overhaul its cryptography.

Team and Funding Concerns
Without a treasury, Beam depends on external capital and community goodwill. If key contributors leave or grants dry up, development velocity could slow, undermining confidence in the protocol’s future.

Getting Started: Your First Steps

For Complete Beginners

1. Learn the Basics
   Spend an hour with Beam’s explainer videos and simplified whitepaper. Focus on why Mimblewimble matters rather than the math.
2. Download the Official Wallet
   Head to beam.mw/downloads, grab the desktop wallet, and start in light mode. Write your seed phrase on paper and store it safely—there’s no password reset in crypto.
3. Get Your First BEAM
   Open an account on Coinbase or Binance, complete KYC, and buy a small amount—maybe $50—to experiment. Withdraw it to your Beam wallet so the funds leave public address tracking.
4. Make Your First Transaction
   Send yourself 1 BEAM to see how the wallet handles addresses, payment proofs, and privacy settings. Explore the built-in DEX with tiny amounts to get comfortable.
5. Join the Community
   Follow @beamprivacy, drop into the Telegram group, and lurk in the Reddit forum. Community channels highlight upcoming staking campaigns, governance votes, and new games to test.

For Investors

1. Research Thoroughly
   Read the full whitepaper, review the emission curve, compare Beam’s metrics with Monero and Zcash, and digest both sides of the investment thesis.
2. Assess Risk Tolerance
   Beam is speculative. Allocate only what you’re truly willing to lose and treat it as a high-volatility satellite position rather than a core portfolio holding.
3. Choose Purchase Strategy
   Dollar-cost averaging can smooth timing risk. Alternatively, place limit orders below market to accumulate slowly. Always withdraw from exchanges to your own wallet once trades settle.
4. Implement Security Best Practices
   Enable 2FA on exchange accounts, keep private keys offline, replicate backups in multiple locations, and consider an air-gapped setup for larger holdings.
5. Plan Exit Strategy
   Set profit targets, decide when you’ll de-risk, and establish pain points where you’ll cut losses. Track regulatory headlines closely—privacy policies can change quickly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Beam truly anonymous?
Beam hides amounts and participants, but it isn’t magic invisibility. Exchanges that perform KYC can still link identities, and sophisticated network observers might glean patterns. For stronger privacy, use Beam’s Dandelion++ routing, avoid centralized ramps, and mix operational security best practices with the protocol’s features.

How does Beam compare to Monero for privacy?
Monero specializes in robust network-layer obfuscation via ring signatures and stealth addresses. Beam’s privacy hinges on Mimblewimble efficiency and adds private smart contracts. Choose Monero if pure payments privacy is the goal; pick Beam if you need programmable privacy for DeFi or gaming.

Can Beam be used for illegal activities?
Any privacy tool could be misused, but Beam aims to serve legitimate needs such as protecting business strategies, shielding salaries, or preventing censorship. Optional auditability gives users a way to prove compliance when required.

What happens when all BEAM is mined?
Block rewards phase out, leaving transaction fees to pay miners—similar to Bitcoin’s long-term plan. The final coin should be minted around 2152, leaving plenty of runway to adjust incentives if necessary.

Is Beam quantum-resistant?
Not yet. Beam uses widely adopted cryptography that quantum computers could break someday. The team monitors quantum-safe research and can upgrade primitives when practical, a challenge most blockchains share.

Why did Beam pivot to gaming?
Privacy coins have faced regulatory headwinds and slow mainstream adoption. Gaming gives Beam a massive addressable market and a clear reason why privacy matters—hidden inventories, stealth strategies, and fair tournaments. The pivot also brings fresh partners, funding, and content pipelines.

The Bottom Line

Beam blends private money, DeFi, and gaming into one Mimblewimble-powered stack. It solves the transparency woes of public blockchains while experimenting with confidential smart contracts, atomic swaps, and studio-ready SDKs.

Yet Beam sits at a crossroads. The tech is polished, the gaming narrative is compelling, and partnerships like Merit Circle offer firepower. Still, regulatory pressure, fierce competition, and funding questions loom. Success hinges on whether Beam can convert its privacy edge into real usage before rivals or policymakers shut the door.

For investors, Beam is a high-risk bet on privacy meeting interactive entertainment. For privacy-minded users, it’s a toolkit that grants control over who sees financial activity, trading positions, or in-game treasures. The opportunity is clear, but so are the obstacles.

Want to Learn More?

• Official Website: Visit beam.mw for product overviews and downloads
• Whitepaper: Dig into the technical documentation
• GitHub: Inspect the open-source codebase
• BeamX DeFi: Launch private DeFi apps via the BeamX portal
• Gaming Ecosystem: Browse titles and SDKs at Beam Gaming
• Community Forum: Join discussion threads on Reddit
• Developer Docs: Follow build guides on BeamX GitBook
• Block Explorer: Review anonymized activity at explorer.beam.mw
• Telegram Community: Chat with other users in the official group
• YouTube Channel: Watch tutorials and AMAs on Beam’s channel