Mina Protocol in a nutshell

So blockchain has come to a point right now where they cannot be ignored because they are taking the world by storm,we have web 1.0,web2.0(the current web) and now web 3.0(the decentralized web)

One of the problems we currently face today is that of transaction speeds,there is high fees like in Ethereum,it takes too much to transact and then we have the issue of resource intensiveness,you have to download hundreds of gigabytes of data like Bitcoin,Ethereum and others to verify the chain or else you will have to trust a 3rd party for that

..what I present to you today is the Mina Protocol..

so basically it’s a blockchain that is succinct, what that means is that it’s not going to exceed a certain limit,it going to be fixed, it’s 22kb, this 22kb is basically proof of all the history plus the Merkle path to that,so what that means with zero-knowledge proofs,so this is the snapshot of the blockchain,and then we can say,at point A, this is what happened,we take a snapshot of it, this is point B, this is what happened, we take a picture of it,so we keep taking a snapshot of the chain…

Supposing you have a big toy,you can convince your colleagues to come and collect or you could take the toy which is very big or you can simply take a photo of that same toy and go and show it to their friends,so for the mina protocol it uses Zero Knowledge Proofs,to take a snapshot of what happened in the blockchain,you take a picture and a picture of another picture,..so what you just need to prove that this is the … is having pictures of all the blocks

Some of the applications of mina

You don’t have to trust a third party that has hundreds of nodes,with your mobile phone you can check what the state of the blockchain and verify transactions.

2. It also provides toolsets for Zk proofs and zk SNARKS,so if you want to build zk proofs applications you do not need to have a PhD in cryptography to be able to do that.

3. With that you will be able to port real world data to the blockchain,

What mina protocol uses is zk proofs

Zk proofs are ways we can prove that something is true/false without revealing knowledge.

A good example will be supposing you want to walk into a place,and they said that you can only get access to this place if you are above 18 years, or if you have certain amount of money,so how do you prove that you are above 18 without actually revealing your age to the person on duty,you will bring your id,you scan your id,and you get access to the place unlike before where they will have to check your ID,

…the prover is able to verify that you are actually above 18 without divulging knowledge…

Ethereum for example is implementing a lots of zk proofs as layer2 inorder to scale its throughput,… right now you don’t have to do a lot of computation,just have some cryptographic proofs that everything happening in the system has been true,(something exist),

Some of the types of nodes in the network

Archival nodes : They store all the transactions in the network

Consensus nodes :They don’t have to store all the state,they are mainly involved in consensus

A brief on Mina Tokenomics

There is an initial total of 1,000,000,000 tokens

Over the course of the next 4 years,they will be an inflation of 12%,after that,it will drop to 7%

If you do not unlock your tokens after 15 months, you will get double the block rewards(supercharged rewards)

Another thing in this platform is Pickles, before now if you want to zero-knowledge proofs, you will have to have a trusted setup but with Pickles, there is no need for that,

And it offers core zk-SNARKS … you can use to build stuff without having a PhD in cryptography and with a developer toolkit,

The next thing we will talk about is SNAPPS,they are apps built on Mina Protocol, they are similar to dapps but they are different in that they have zero-knowledge proofs built right in and not as an added feature.

They are built using snarky: Mina's own smart contracting language.

For consensus,it uses staking

It’s a proof of stake chain,it uses an adapted version of Ouroboros called Ouroboros Samasika

Nodes in the network are selected pre-epoch and that makes it hard for 51% of attacks.

According to the Gauntlet report, they estimate that it will cost less than $100 to run hardware for validation monthly on the network

It’s very cheap, you just need the basic device.

There are three roles in the network

Verifiers: They run full nodes in the network

Block producers: They get block rewards and transaction fees

Snarkers: They produce SNARKS(historical proofs of previous transactions) and they sell it to block producers

So for a transaction to be added to a block,it’s required that the block producer attach an historical proof(SNARK) to that block,

So this is a particular block at a point in time Ta,it has to attached other historical proofs and that can be produced by snarkers or the block producers themselves,

Token utility

The token will be used for staking as a staker(validator) or you can delegate your stake and still earn rewards.

It’s the sole mechanism for payments in the network(transaction fees etc)

It’s used as a means of incentives to reward different network contributors

Genesis launch

So it’s a new network, there are lots of grants available to build different aspects of the network, if you want to build apps with snarky, engage your local community, seek out and report bugs.

You can also be part of the genesis program, you can be involved in different challenges and earn some rewards,

In a nutshell

We can liken Mina Protocol as taking a photo of a photo of a photo

Supposing I have a kid and the kid has a very mighty toy, he himself can’t even move the toy and he desires to prove to his friends that he actually owns the toy, there are 3 possibilities

A. He can take the toy to school

B. He may invite his friends over to the house

C. He may take a picture of the toy to go and show his friends

Mina enables one to have snapshots of the blockchain without dealing with the complexities of storing hundreds of gigabytes of data

With a mobile phone, anyone can verify this network