What is Mina?

Mina is a lightweight blockchain that maintains a constant size of just 22 kilobytes, regardless of how much the usage grows. It seeks to solve the scalability difficulties of current blockchains, in which the cost of verifying the blockchain climbs proportionately to total transaction volume. Mina aims to create a decentralised payment system that provides efficient verification of system history from inception without depending on external guidance.

The MINA token is the native currency of the Mina Protocol. It is used to stake and produce blocks on the Mina blockchain and is the exclusive currency of Mina’s ’Snarketplace’.

A brief history of Mina

Software development company (O)1 Labs started working on the Coda Protocol, the former name of Mina, in the middle of 2017. It was the brainchild of Evan Shapiro and Izaak Meckler, who aspired to create a decentralised and scalable protocol. At the time, Meckler was pursuing a PhD in cryptography at UC Berkeley and was learning about the zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge (zk-SNARK).

Shapiro and Meckler’s theory suggested that the ordinary end-user couldn’t get access to Ethereum without relying on a third party running a complete node. The duo sought to create a blockchain network that keeps storage costs as low as possible so that anyone could operate a complete node.

In May 2018, (O)1 Labs raised US$3.5 million in seed investment to start the development of Coda Protocol. In April 2019, a Series A round worth US$15 million was secured; but in October of that year, R3, a Corda blockchain developer, sued (O)1 Labs over the Coda Protocol name, saying it was too close to R3’s Corda trademark name. In response to the lawsuit, Coda Protocol relaunched as Mina in September 2020, claiming to be the world’s lightest blockchain-powered by participants.

In October 2020, Mina completed a strategic round of investments worth US$10.9 million. Mina launched its mainnet on 23 March 2021 and conducted a public sale of 75 million MINA the following month. The Mina team revealed that it has allocated an initial distribution of 1 billion MINA tokens, with 34.8% going to the community, 23.6% to core contributors, 20.5% to previous backers, and the rest for token sales and endowments. The total initial allocation is set to be completed eight years after the mainnet launch. In addition, Mina has estimated that block rewards will account for the addition of more than 500 million MINA tokens within six years after the mainnet launch.

How Mina works

The Mina Protocol aims to keep the blockchain open and accessible to the public by using a set of hybrid zero-knowledge (zk) proofs, a unique node topology, and technological design. Through the use of zk proofs, users can verify they have certain information or are a specific person without giving any real data to the other side of the blockchain transaction, therefore increasing a user’s privacy. This is how the zk-SNARK cryptographic proof construction works.

As a general-purpose protocol, Mina is built to power and enable zkApps — SNARK-powered decentralised apps.

The Mina Protocol’s technological design is functionally comparable to Bitcoin. After a transaction is completed, it is added to a pending transaction queue. This queue enables block producers to choose which transactions to include, depending on the size of the transaction fee.

This topology keeps the Mina blockchain lightweight, but with certain technological drawbacks. The network performs similarly to Bitcoin in terms of speed, with MINA capable of 22 transactions per second (tps). Notably, it takes 15 confirmations for a transaction to finalise on the network. On the Mina blockchain, three necessary parties collaborate — verifiers, block makers, and snarkers. Each of these users is critical to making the network secure, legitimate, and light.

What is Mina used for?

MINA is the native currency of the Mina blockchain, functioning as a utility coin and medium of exchange on the network. Crypto investors may want to purchase MINA tokens in support of the project’s vision for the widespread adoption of lightweight blockchains.