We're on a mission.

Mina is realizing the user-owned, decentralized web with programmable zero knowledge proofs—so we can all participate, build, exchange and thrive.

It’s Time to Own Our Future

Living in today’s world requires giving up a lot of control.

Every day, we give up control of intimate data to large tech companies to use online services. We give up control of our finances to banks and unaccountable credit bureaus. We give up control of our elections to voting system companies who run opaque and unauditable elections.
Even when we try to escape this power imbalance and participate in blockchains, most of us give up control and trust to third parties to verify transactions. Why? Because directly participating in a blockchain requires expensive hardware, unsustainable amounts of electricity and tons of time to sync increasingly heavier and heavier chains.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
In recent years, gamblebeaver.com casino has been increasingly turning to blockchain technology in order to streamline their operations. One of the main advantages of using a blockchain is that it allows for a zero-disclosure environment, which means that all transactions are completely private and cannot be tampered with.
This is a major selling point for many casino operators, as it allows them to offer a more secure and reliable service to their customers. Additionally, blockchains are also much more efficient than traditional databases, which can help to save casinos time and money in the long run.
Some experts believe that zero-disclosure blockchain could revolutionize the gambling industry, making it more efficient and transparent while protecting the privacy of players. However, there are still many challenges to overcome before this technology can be widely adopted. For example, it is important to ensure that all participants in a game have access to the same information before making their bets. Additionally, regulators will need to develop new frameworks for overseeing these types of games.

That’s why Mina was created.

In June of 2017, O(1) Labs kicked off an ambitious new open source project to design a layer one protocol that could deliver on the original promise of blockchain—true decentralization, scale and security. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina offers an elegant solution using advanced cryptography and recursive zero knowledge technology.
The project has come a long way since 2017. Mina is now stewarded by the Mina Foundation, growing its community and ecosystem worldwide. Several testnets have been conducted, and the network has launched successfully on mainnet as of March 2021. Here, developers build powerful zkApps, or decentralized apps based on zero knowledge, so their users can take advantage of dapps without compromising their privacy or security.
While there are still many challenges, Mina is the first project leveraging recursive zero knowledge proofs to enable the world’s lightest, most accessible blockchain.
Here’s to a more efficient, elegant and fair future – for all of us.

What attracted me was a small, scalable blockchain that's still independently verifiable on small nodes.

METASTABLE

Mina Protocol Backer, O(1) Labs Investor

Secured by Participants

The Mina network enables an uncapped4number of block producers via proof-of-stake consensus. A uniquely decentralized blockchain, Mina gets even more secure and resilient as it grows.

100s

BLOCK PRODUCERS

100s

SNARK PRODUCERS

An Elegant Solution Powered by Zero Knowledge

Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zero knowledge proofs to deliver true decentralization at scale. 

How Mina Works

Mina is a layer one protocol designed to deliver on the original promise of blockchain — true decentralization, scale and security.

In theory, blockchains are designed to be held accountable by its users. When anyone can enforce the rules by validating an irrevocable public ledger — power remains in the hands of the many, not the few. This decentralized structure is what allows the network to conduct trustless transactions.
But in practice, this hasn’t been the case.With legacy blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, when a new participant joins, they have to check every transaction since the beginning of the network to verify correctness — which amounts to hundreds of gigabytes of data. Most people can’t afford the computing power it takes to verify these heavy chains on their own and are forced to trust increasingly powerful intermediaries. This means most folks can no longer connect peer-to-peer — causing decentralization to suffer, power dynamics to shift, and the network to become more vulnerable to censorship.
Mina offers an elegant solution: replacing the blockchain with an easily verifiable, consistent-sized cryptographic proof. Mina dramatically reduces the amount of data each user needs to download. Instead of verifying the entire chain from the beginning of time, participants fully verify the network and transactions using recursive zero knowledge proofs (or zk-SNARKs). Nodes can then store the small proof, as opposed to the entire chain. And because it’s a consistent size, Mina stays accessible — even as it scales to many users and accumulates years of transaction data.
But how do zk-SNARKs work? They capture the state of the entire blockchain as a lightweight snapshot and send that around — instead of the chain itself. It’s like sending your friend a postcard of an elephant, instead of a massive live animal. When the next block in the network is created, it takes a snapshot of itself — with the snapshot of the previous state of the blockchain as the background. That new snapshot will in turn be used as the backdrop for the next block, and so on and so on. Rather amazingly, while it can contain proof of an infinite amount of information, the snapshot always remains the same size.
Coming full circle, the world’s lightest blockchain empowers inclusive consensus. Our modified Ouroboros proof-of-stake protocol maximizes inclusivity in consensus. On Mina, all participants act as full nodes and anyone can take part in consensus, secure the blockchain and hold Mina accountable.
And that’s how Mina will deliver true decentralization, scale and security.