The goal of the Mina Protocol is to create an extremely small blockchain, requiring only 22 kB of storage space regardless of the number of transactions that are processed.
With a small footprint, even those without access to expensive computing resources should be able to run a node and contribute to the network’s security.
Mina has committed to making the entire blockchain smaller than most images on your phone to avoid the blockchain size problems that have plagued other projects as they expand.
The native cryptocurrency of the Mina Protocol, MINA, is used to settle transactions on the network and share transaction fees among users.
With the widespread adoption of blockchain technology, the quantity of recorded transactions has skyrocketed across most infrastructures.
For example, the Ethereum blockchain started at slightly more than 5 GB in April 2016, but by April 2021, it had grown to more than 220 GB. Over those five years, millions of transactions were broadcast on the blockchain.
Blockchains are decentralized ledgers of previous transactions.
As the blockchain has grown, the computational power and energy required to run a node (which contains the whole history of the blockchain) have increased.
This has made it harder for regular users to contribute to the blockchain’s upkeep. Because individuals with the most computer power are the most efficient at managing the huge chain size, many worry about the centralization danger that the blockchain faces.
To solve this problem, the Mina team implemented a cryptographic approach known as zk-SNARKS to build a blockchain focused on payments that do not require every node to store every transaction.
As a result, less processing power is required to maintain a blockchain network’s integrity.
According to Mina’s logic, the network will progress toward more decentralization and security if more users can run nodes and validate transactions.
What Is Mina (MINA)?
Mina is the first blockchain-based succinct cryptocurrency network.
A succinct blockchain is a replicated state machine where every transition can be confirmed effectively in constant time.
Not only that, but a new generation of users has made Mina the world’s smallest blockchain.
Mina’s whitepaper claims the platform can verify payment in as little as 200 milliseconds, making it ideal for use on lightweight clients and mobile devices.
After realizing that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies’ level of decentralization reduces their scalability, the Mina protocol was developed.
To transact and validate payments, many cryptocurrencies employ decentralized payment systems.
Nonetheless, it was discovered that a standard laptop would take days to complete the verification and download of the transaction history associated with this cryptocurrency.
The blockchains that record transactions in these coins can grow to hundreds of gigabytes in size.
Thus, succinct blockchain is here, on a mission to create a decentralized payment system that provides efficient verification of system history from its inception without needing to consult with a third party.
As Mina’s popularity increases, the size of the blockchain will increase proportionally, but it will remain around 22 kb (the size of a few tweets).
Mina makes it simple for participants to sync and validate the network on their own devices.
Incorporating zk-SNARKs, a type of brief cryptographic proof, also helps accomplish this goal. When a new block is created on a Mina node, a SNARK proof is also generated to ensure the block is legitimate.
After this validation is complete, the little evidence is all that must be stored on each node rather than the entire chain.
Therefore, the Mina protocol allows for a scalable decentralized blockchain without regard to block size.
Instead of transmitting the complete blockchain, zk-SNARKs merely send a snapshot of the entire chain, which is far smaller in size.
When the time comes to generate the next block in the chain, zk-SNARKs will take a snapshot of itself using the snapshot of the blockchain’s initial state as a backdrop.
There will be no break in this pattern of repetition. Even with an abundance of data, this photo retains its original size.
The Origins of Mina (MINA)
After extensive testing on multiple testnets, Mina was finally released in 2020.
Mina’s economic and technical whitepapers were published in 2020; the former in October and the latter in March.
Evan Shapiro (Mina Foundation CEO), Josh Cincinnati, and Jill Carlson make up the board of directors at Mina Foundation.
For example, Evan Shapiro was a software developer at Mozilla, and Josh Cincinnati was the previous executive director of the Zcash Foundation.
Jill Carlson runs everything at Slow Ventures as the boss lady. At Oxford, she studied cryptocurrency for her Ph.D.
How Does Mina Protocol Work?
Zk-SNARKs, short for “zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge,” is crucial to the Mina Protocol.
Invented by Silvio Micali, an MIT academic and the man behind the Algorand blockchain, this computer concept allows users to verify their possession of data without actually sharing it.
Zcash is another prominent digital currency that makes use of zk-SNARKs.
That’s great news for Mina because it implies blocks can be formed without a transaction being verified each time. Instead, a cryptographic proof that can be easily verified stands in for the blockchain (the zk-SNARK).
In contrast to other blockchains, this proof only has to store the status of the entire chain, not just the most recent block.
Mina asserts that using zk-SNARKs in conjunction with a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism drastically reduces the resources required to process and record transactions.
Each user on the Mina network must maintain a node to make and receive payments.
To top it all off, Mina Protocol relies on two specialized nodes within the network for proper operation:
Block Producers
Block producers choose which transactions to include in the subsequent block and receive the reward for that block. They are comparable to the “miners” and “validators” of other blockchains.
Snark Workers
Snark workers dedicate CPU power to compressing network traffic and generating transaction proofs. Then, block manufacturers may bid on these proofs, for which snark employees are compensated in MINA.
