🪶 Lightweight Blockchain
Today's Highlights
- Mina Protocol - efficient blockchains
- Today's Infographic
- In Other News - a few interesting developments we're tracking.
Mina Protocol - efficient blockchains
Blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum accumulate data over time and reach a size of hundreds of gigabytes. Subsequently, they keep growing even further. Mina Protocol has developed its own technology for a lightweight blockchain based on the concept of "proofs of constant size". With it, the blockchain remains compact, which is crucial to achieving the company's primary goal of establishing a worldwide payment system. Regardless of its level of use, the Mina blockchain remains 22 kilobytes in size. In this way, all transactions can be verified quickly and efficiently, and the network can be synchronized at any time.
Mina Protocol employs zero-knowledge proof smart contracts called ZK-Apps, which provide powerful and unique features such as unlimited off-chain computation, privacy of sensitive data, and the ability to write smart contracts in TypeScript, among others. Mina's smart contracts allow developers to create decentralized applications (DApps) with a focus on privacy.
Blockchains like Bitcoin or Dogecoin face the problem of considerable latency while verifying the entire chain due to its constantly increasing size. However, with Mina, participants can fully verify the network and transactions from their regular devices using recursive zero-knowledge proofs or ZK-SNARKs. ZK-SNARKs open up new possibilities for blockchain use cases, such as confidential data, credit ratings, home addresses, medical information, and more.
The Mina network is protected by a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus known as Ouroboros Samisika. Ouroboros Samisika, based on Cardano's Ouroboros, is a PoS consensus mechanism that requires significantly less computational power than Bitcoin's PoW protocol.
Evan Shapiro and Izaac Meckler are the founders of Mina Protocol. They have raised a total of $136.7M in funding.