Mina mainnet launched one year ago! It has been a year of incredible growth as we worked together towards a more vibrant and decentralized community network.
Along the way the community has made many achievements. Here are some of them:
- 1100+ grantees
- 200+ staking pools
- Launched 44 releases since release 1.0.0 – the first mainnet release
- Established the Mina Foundation
- Expanded the number of ecosystem partners
- O(1) Labs working on core protocol improvements and zkApps.
- ChainSafe working on building an in-browser node.
- Nil Foundation working on building the Mina bridge to Ethereum.
- Polygon working on a Mina bridge to bring Privacy-Preserving zkApps to Polygon
- Further developed zkApps
- Doubled in community size from 100K to over 270K.
Community Celebration
On March 23rd, 2022, the one-year anniversary of Mainnet launch, Mina community members and ecosystem partners came together to celebrate these achievements and to share their thoughts and memories.
Many attendees had great things to share and here are just a few.
“There are many many opportunities that will come with zkApps… I’m currently working on a zkRollup…” — Trivo#0001
“…(I) help navigate folks to all the wonderful tools that everybody else here has been such a big part of creating to help the community.” — Boston Mike#0643
“…Mina protocol is nice to create games (which will be a) very important (use case of) zero knowledge proofs…” — antropocosmist#5394
“… something that we have to all be really proud of is the stability and the improvement in terms of the stability of the chain. No forks, no halts, nothing at all.” — ivandiazperez#5927
The event wouldn’t be complete without Mina trivia as well. Participants competed against each other to show off their knowledge of Mina and the top 5 eligible scorers will receive either a Ledger Nano S or a Keystone Tablet Plus with the next 5 receiving the newest set of Mina swag.
Mina Trivia Prize Winners
- Dragonstone#5727
- Dom ino#1839
- lamps#6718
- Beta#0963
- talha#0779
- Deathtime#6952
- Anupans#1046
- janenoskachova#9025
- Ducca | StakeTab#5707
- Jagon#4959
What’s Next
With so many exciting developments in the ecosystem it is easy to lose track of what is going on. To catch the latest developments check out the monthly ecosystem updates and the latest product priorities blog which is updated quarterly.
Get Involved
Opportunities to be a part of the early stages of zkApp development abound, while taking part in Mina’s decision making process and connecting with ecosystem contributors are all available.
With many things on the horizon here are some that you can take advantage of:
- Test zkApps on Berkeley QANet
- Send a message in the #devnet channel on Discord and tag CrisF#3405 to get early access to new features on QANets.
- Influence Mina Protocol’s future in Mina Research.
- Community discussion about invalid GFM (Grantee) keys
- Stay tuned for a Mina Improvement Proposal coming soon about updating the Mina account creation fee.
- In-person events in April in Amsterdam drop by if you’re around!
- ZkSummit
- ETHAmsterdam
- In-person Mina meetup — tentatively April 21 —, join the Amsterdam Meetup group and keep an eye on Discord for more information.
- Mina 101: Everything You Need to Know Weekly Community Gatherings
- Help new members get onboarded and join Mina’s growing community – sign up https://bit.ly/Mina-101
The best way to stay updated on zkApps, incentivized testnets, the Eth x Mina bridge, etc., is to sign up for the newsletter.
Final Thoughts
It has been an incredibly exciting year with many major accomplishments in the development of the Mina ecosystem and community. It’s great to see members from across the globe coming together to celebrate their common journey with one another. Below are more stories captured during this year’s celebration.
Thank you for being on this journey. Let’s see what we can accomplish together in the future!
“Mina is only project that I use everyday.” — Slafi#7815
“It was amazing! Communicating with the team, testnet, creating memes, videos and much more was an amazing and interesting experience.” — Vincagame#6490
“Back around 2 years when I was not running any nodes though I had some knowledge about server infrastructures… I started browsing the Mina Discord channel as it was too interesting and the community was so awesome… I opened a GCP account and started running Mina validator in Testnet and the rest is history… MINA was a Perfect Launchpad for us to start and grow to something we did not even dream of. Mina is not just a blockchain, it is a decentralization culture…” — jenni#0900
“I still remember with pleasure the time when we had the final testnet. How we worked as one big team to find out more about Mina and become the greatest node runners! One of the best experience in my life.” — Tvojbatya#6470
“My favorite memory is that everyone in the community could learn new technical knowledge. More experienced people will help. Everyone can!” — 2TheMoon ッ#3371
“I remember when Garethtdavies#4963 did not make it to the top 100 block producers (120bp now) for some reason. It was amazing how some community members stood by him because they believed he deserved it due to his numerous contributions to the community. It was amazing and lovely. The Mina community is one big family if you ask me.” — Bunkee#3249
“With the help of Mina Protocol, I have expanded my boundaries as a content creator. Conditions and competition were crazy. Therefore, I had to devote a lot of time to completing assignments that were of the highest quality, informative and useful for the community and the project. Due to great competition and limited time to complete tasks, I had to brainstorm, learn techniques for video creation, 3-D modeling and art. After the end of this activity, I can say with confidence that my experience and the quality of work has improved by 50-100%. And after I found out that I was in the top 25 winners, I was overwhelmed with emotions, and so with the help of the community and the Mina Protocol team, I realized that I was on the right track and doing the right things. Thanks Mina for that!” — vinco#8755
“Waiting for the first block and wishing for the archive process to work without an issue was something else I can’t describe with words.” — Emre • PICONBELLO#4353
About Mina Protocol
Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, powered by participants. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs to design an entire blockchain that is about 22kb, the size of a couple of tweets. It is the first layer-1 to enable efficient implementation and easy programmability of zero knowledge smart contracts (zkApps). With its unique privacy features and ability to connect to any website, Mina is building a private gateway between the real world and crypto—and the secure, democratic future we all deserve.
