Mina Protocol MINA Price

zk-SNARK (Zero Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) is a compressed cryptographic proof that verifies the network status.

Minimum protocol size provides:

• consistency of performance;
• increasing popularity;
• balance, which increases the parameters of security and decentralization.

History of Mina Protocol

• In 2017, O(1)Labs was founded by Evan Shapiro and Isaac Meckler.
• In 2018, the O(1)Labs team announced its project on the social platform Medium. It was originally called Coda and had the promise to solve the issue of blockchain size fixation.
• In 2019, O(1)Labs managed to raise $15 million to develop its project.
• In 2020, Zk-SNARKS was introduced to the public after three years of development and fundraising.
• In October 2020, the project was renamed from Coda Protocol to Mina. Mina Coin, Mina Protocol's currency, entered the market the same year.

Mina Protocol Roadmap (Full version)

Mina Protocol Features

The main outstanding features of this blockchain are its compactness and its fixed size. The new network solves the main problem experienced by such major blockchain as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

Due to the specifics of their architecture, the chains become too heavy as the number of users and transactions increases. As a consequence, mining participation is no longer available to everyone, there is less decentralization, and the vulnerability of the system becomes higher.

Mina Protocol has managed to invent its own lightweight blockchain technology. With this technology, it is always possible to keep the blockchain compact, which makes it possible to expect the realization of the company's main goal: the creation of a global payment system.

The size of the Mina blockchain, no matter how actively it is used, always remains around 22 kilobytes. This means that the network can always be synchronized quickly and all transactions can be validated.

Zk-Snarks

When new blocks are added to the network, validators must check them for validity before adding them to the blockchain. In most blockchains, all miners and validators must actually do this, but that increases the size of the blockchain quite a bit.

Maintaining a small fixed size is now possible with zk-SNARK proofs with zero disclosure. Zk-SNARK is a chain snapshot that is created every time a new block is generated, capturing the current state of the network. The snapshot is used as the basis for the next one and can contain evidence for an unlimited number of transactions.

This particular attribute leads to the advantages of the Mina Protocol.

Mina Cryptocurrency

Mina cryptocurrency is a chain of compressed blocks, which are formed to minimize computational requirements. At the same time, it aims to increase the efficiency of DApps.

The coin is issued on its own blockchain; it is required for any transactions within the network. It is used for

1. paying transfer fees;
2. creating Snapps;
3. deploying smart contracts.

Ways to Get Mina

• Stacking. The conventional way of earning involves two requirements: to be online all the time and to use the time synchronization protocol permanently. The team recommends using the NTP service installed in a number of Linux distributions.
• Delegation. As an alternative, it is proposed to delegate: the transfer of your stacks to block producers, the bigger players. You will have to pay for delegation as for a standard operation plus pay a commission to the producers for their services. It is important to remember that the transfer of tokens is not performed instantly, and takes two to four weeks.
• Snarking. Finally, tokens can be earned through snarking, a local version of mining. By generating new snarks and participating in chain data compression, users claim a reward for each processed block.

Mina Protocol Pros and Cons

Summary

The Mina Protocol allows the creation of truly productive and still secure blockchain applications (Snapps). Other modern blockchains focus on scalability and high throughput, while sacrificing network security. Validators will not have to process a lot of data in the blockchain, and the consensus will be achieved faster, so the future of the Mina Protocol is quite good.

Perhaps, in the future an entire ecosystem will emerge and develop around the Mina platform, which will include not only decentralized projects, but also Internet data providers. For Mina Protocol such perspective will be a point for rapid growth, which will probably affect the rate of MINA cryptocurrency as well.