Beacon is critical for bootstrapping. When we started genesis, we couldn’t run the beacon protocol ahead of time, since it was impossible to determine eligibility to participate. To work around this, Spacemesh started providing this value every epoch, as a fallback for when the protocol didn’t run properly in the previous epoch. This can only happen if there’s a prolonged network downtime or attack, but still gives Spacemesh a privilege that others don’t possess.
Beacon is critical for bootstrapping. When we started genesis, we couldn’t run the beacon protocol ahead of time, since it was impossible to determine eligibility to participate. To work around this, Spacemesh started providing this value every epoch, as a fallback for when the protocol didn’t run properly in the previous epoch. This can only happen if there’s a prolonged network downtime or attack, but still gives Spacemesh a privilege that others don’t possess.