Introduction

The digital age is plagued by misinformation and dishonesty, which leads to mistrust and a divided community. It is difficult for members of the Web3 community to trust the authenticity of information without the involvement of a third party.

However, Mina introduces a way to verify and access private and secure data while remaining 22 KB in size. In this article, we will examine Mina’s history, workings, and utility token that powers the ecosystem.

What is Mina Protocol?

Mina Protocol is a lightweight protocol that remains the same size regardless of the number of transactions executed on the network. Its fixed size is just 22 KB, and it allows anyone to operate a node while helping secure the network without the use of advanced computing hardware.

The Mina protocol does this to counter the size issue of blockchain projects around the ecosystem. By keeping its entire network smaller than the size of a picture, the platform can solve issues of high energy consumption and the need for expensive computing hardware to use the network.

This approach also eradicates the issue of potential centralization by members with greater computer power to control the large size of the chains. The protocol utilizes a cryptography technique called zk-SNARKS to create a payment-oriented blockchain that executes transactions without each node creating records of completed transactions.

What is The Mina Foundation?

The Mina Foundation is a non-profit foundation that teams up with the Mina protocol ecosystem partners to ensure the network’s safety and health and administer grant programs to community members who are key contributors to the protocol’s goals. Ultimately, the foundation is tasked with ensuring the ecosystem’s growth and enhancing its overall level.

The foundation has a delegation program that delegates voting power to third-party block producers. The voting power is attached to the platform’s base token, $MINA, and shows the platform’s dedication to decentralization. Lastly, the block producers are selected objectively and transparently based on their uptime performance.

History of The Mina Protocol

Initially called the Coda Protocol, the Mina Protocol was developed by the O(1) labs team in 2017. The team is led by Evan Shapiro, Co-founder and Chief Product and Strategy Officer of the protocol, and Izaak Meckler, who dreamt of launching a decentralized and scalable protocol while studying cryptography at Berkeley.

The two realized users’ difficulty accessing the Ethereum network without using third parties to help run a full node. This led to developers relying on app development services like Infura or Alchemy. At the O(1) labs, the team discovered two major issues with this problem: the blockchain became less trustworthy, and the user interface became complex and unsuitable for users.

Ultimately, the team built a blockchain that keeps storage costs low enough that anyone can run a full node. The protocol created was called the Coda protocol but was later changed to the Mina protocol after the developers of the Corda blockchain R3 filed a lawsuit against O(1) lab. The lawsuit was a trademark dispute over the similarity of their names, which led to the platform’s name becoming Mina Protocol in September 2020.

The protocol began its funding round in October and raised $10.9 million through Bixin Ventures in Hong Kong and Three Arrows Capital from Singapore. However, the launch of the protocol mainnet was delayed because the team believed a blockchain should not be launched during the holiday season.

Finally released in March 2021, the Mina protocol began a partnership with CoinList for its token sale. On March 17, the Mina ecosystem announced that it had raised $92 million through FTX Venture and Three Arrows Capital with the help of other institutions like Brevan Howard, Amber Group, Blockchain.com, Circle Ventures, Finality Capital Partners, Pantera, and a few anonymous Mina backers.

How Does The Mina Protocol Work?

Two major components are crucial to the Mina Protocol’s success. The first is the incorporation of zk-SNARKS (zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge). This concept allows users to certify they possess certain data without disclosing it to other users. It was developed by MIT professor Silvio Micali, who is also the founder of Algorand.

On the Mina Protocol, zk-SNARK is used as an easily verifiable cryptographic proof. This allows the network to verify transactions without using every block created. The blockchain uses zk-SNARK, which is smaller than other blockchains and shows the condition of the entire chain, not just the blocks within the network.

The second component of the Mina Protocol is its Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism, Ouroboros Samasika. This consensus mechanism is an alteration to the Ouroboros consensus designed by IOHK for the Cardano network. A major difference is that the Ouroboros Samasika can achieve consensus without having access to the block’s history.

The Ouroboros Samasika algorithm is designed for every user regardless of their stake size. Additionally, nodes that act maliciously are no longer trusted instead of losing their stake. The protocol also uses a recursive SNARK system that allows SNARKs to verify one another, leading to a stack of SNARKs being gathered into one block proof before being sent out.

The Mina Protocol also uses Recursive zk snarks to ensure it remains lightweight. With zksnarks, computation can be verified without the inputs being revealed. When a transaction is initiated, zkSnarks send a snapshot of the entire blockchain as proof rather than the entire chain itself. When the next transaction is initiated, it takes a snapshot of itself with the previous state in the background as proof. This process happens whenever a transaction is initiated, keeping the size constant while maintaining an infinite amount of information.

Lastly, the Berkely upgrade has introduced a new level of decentralization for executing basic transactions and enhancing real-world programs and applications. By introducing programmable zero knowledge proofs, Mina opens the door to more possibilities in different areas of the Web3 ecosystem.

For example, when programmable zkps are applied to programmable blockchains, they unlock an open database of verifiable statements, infrastructures, and applications creating new interactive services for users. Additionally, these new created services are all composable and allow each application in the Mina ecosystem to seamlessly interact and combine.

Mina’s Proof of Everything

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Unlike traditional replicated systems that require all replicates data across all servers creating scalability issues, Mina shares data and computation across all networks. This allows users only share proof that their data and computation was correct, eliminating the need for redundancy and bloating, leading to new levels of scalability and efficiency.

The Mina platform ushers in a system of integrity to the internet. Users can now carry out transactions with trust knowing they can verify each other’s work on any device. The new trust paired with Mina’s Permissionless and decentralized nature grants users access to the system and can also provide data to the system as long as it can be verified.

Main Features of Mina Protocol

Mina blockchain is designed to maintain a small and compact blockchain that allows participants to quickly verify the network. To achieve this, the network equips itself with the following features:

Participants

Mina uses various participants to function in different parts of its platform, ensuring total decentralization of the network and creating a truly unique platform. The three roles adopted by the protocol are:

• Verifiers: Every user on the platform performs as a verifier. These users become verifiers by interacting with zk-SNARKS, which certifies the consensus information. Once a user has a device that can handle a 22 KB network and milliseconds of processing, they can become verifiers.
• Block Producers: Block producers are responsible for gathering transactions into blocks. They also prevent incomplete blocks and other nodes from rejecting their validity by SNARKing an equivalent number of committed trades. Usually, transactions are selected according to the amount of gas fee required to complete the transaction.
• Snarkers: Also known as provers, snarkers create zk-SNARKs used to verify transactions. The block producer pays snarkers using transaction fees earned from creating new blocks. Snarkers must bid to qualify for fees, creating a competitive ecosystem where multiple snarkers can bid for the same transaction.

ZKP

Zero knowledge proofs (ZKP) are used by a user to prove they know or possess a piece of data without revealing the information itself. This is accomplished through two steps. The first step includes “A prover” who creates a proof using knowledge of a system’s input. Step two involved a “verifier” who attests to the correctness of the proof even though they don’t have access to the information.

Mina uses ZKPs to maintain the size of the protocol while ensuring user privacy. It is the first ZK l1 platform to function with ZK programmability, giving it an extra level of scalability and privacy

zKApps

zKApps (zero-knowledge apps) are smart contracts powered by zero-knowledge proofs that make use of zk-SNARKS. With zk-SNARKS, these apps enable unlimited off-chain transactions, private data inputs are private, and new smart contracts are created using TypeScript.

TypeScript

The o1js typescript library is at l the core of programmable privacy on the Mina protocol. It is a code used to prove that the user knows a secret value whose hash is publicly known without revealing the value itself. With o1js developers can write arbitrary zk programs based off several built-in provable operations like basic arithmetics, Boolean operations, hashing, comparisons, and so on.

Mina Ecosystem

The Mina ecosystem consists of different projects. It includes projects built on the platform and paired with the Mina ecosystem. New projects are added regularly and registered in the Mina directory, which is a map of the Mina landscape. The Mina directory is community-managed and constantly growing proportionally to the growth of the Mina ecosystem.

The ecosystem is made up of projects cutting through different categories such as Dev tools, API and Analytics, De-Fi apps, Bridges, NFTs, wallets, games, and exchanges. Some of these projects include:

Ozkar

Ozkar specializes in creating trustless on-chain data frameworks and collaboration for healthcare data. By using Zero Knowledge Proof, FHE, and Federated learning, developers can create a new line of compliant bioinformatics software.

Xane

Xane is a Zero Knowledge order book decentralized exchange that allows developers to create and deploy their token through a browser.

LuminaDex

LuminaDex is a hybrid Permissionless and Permissioned exchange built to accommodate the needs of decentralized utility tokens and centralized security tokens.

MultiSig Wallet

MultiSig wallet is a customizable zk multi-wallet for zkApps. It is equipped with adjustable metrics that allow third-party authorization and individual management of zkOracle contracts.

zkRedit

Built on the Mina protocol, zkRedit is used to develop ZkApps that track user data points like monthly income and credit score over two years to facilitate mortgage extensions without exposing irrelevant data points.

Mina’s Governance

Mina plans to incorporate user-led governance, ensuring that the decisions made are in the best interest of the user and the community. It emphasizes facilitating platform changes and approving ecosystem funding while conforming to the values of the Mina community.

To ensure the governance system is effective and aligned with the community, it must possess the following attributes:

• Distributed: this means the power needed to effect changes and make decisions within the ecosystem must be spread amongst all platform participants.
• Accessible: it must incorporate accessible designs, incentives, and user education to ensure all users are able to participate without obstructions.
• Transparency: This ensure users are kept in the loop and are aware of decisions made, how it affects the ecosystem and also grants the user the ability to access the outcomes against the expected success criteria.
• Responsive: Mina’s governance must be able to respond to the needs of the community in real-time, aiding the platform to keep up with industry trends.
• Coherent: it must be able to run many processes and decisions at the same time without leading to contradictions.
• Stable: the platform governance must learn to be more robust and resistant to hindrances like exploitation and corruption by malicious parties.

What is the $MINA Token?

The MINA token is the native currency of the Mina blockchain used to participate in block production and purchase of SNARK proofs. It is an inflationary currency with no supply cap that users can stake or delegate to earn a proportional fraction of the inflation without locking the token up.

$MINA Tokenomics

The initial supply of MINA tokens was capped at a billion. However, the token’s inflationary nature means its supply will continue to rise over time. The team introduced inflation to punish users for not staking their tokens. The initial inflation rate was set at 12% but will drop to 7% by 2026.

The MINA Tokens are to be distributed in the following way:

• Community: 42.3% of the total supply
• Core Contributions: 23.6% of the total supply
• Backers: 20.5 % of the total supply
• 0(1) Labs Endowment: 7.5% of the total supply
• MINA Foundation Endowment: 6% of the total supply

$MINA Token Vesting Schedule

The MINA token is to be distributed in the following manner over the next few years:

• Core contributors will receive 4.17% monthly for two years.
• Series A receives 5.26% at the token generating event (TGE) and an additional 5.26% monthly for eighteen months.
• Public sale tokens will be completely distributed at the Token Generation Event.
• The Mina Foundation Endowment will receive 20% of the allocated funds at the TGE then 1.86% monthly for 42 months.
• During the seed round and locked strategic round, 5.26% will be released at the TGE, while 5.26% will be shared monthly for 18 months.
• Finally, the unlocked strategic round will be released at 100% at TGE.

Is Mina Protocol a Good Investment?

Mina is a unique protocol that solves the growing issue of bulky Web3 projects and high energy consumption while ensuring the safe and secure execution of transactions. It creates a more accessible decentralized platform for users to run nodes.

How To Buy MINA Token

MINA can be purchased on decentralized exchanges like Gate.io. To do so, you must create a user account, complete the KYC process, and fund the account.

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