The Mina Foundation will be the non-profit steward of the Mina Protocol that supports the project issuing grants to third parties that make significant contributions and by maintaining & managing community assets.
San Francisco, CA; February 16, 2021 – The Mina Foundation launches with board members including Former Executive Director at Zcash Foundation Josh Cincinnati, Principal of Slow Ventures Jill Carlson, VP of Engineering at Interchain GmbH and Tendermint Core developer Tess Rinearson, Fund Director and Joint Legal Counsel of International Management Services Sean Inggs, and CEO of O(1) Labs, the team that incubated Mina, Evan Shapiro. The Mina Foundation will provide grants to third parties providing significant contributions to the growth and development of the Mina network and will manage the community assets of the world’s lightest blockchain.
Josh Cincinnati, Former Executive Director at Zcash Foundation, conveyed, “Mina’s launch is likely to be the largest production deployment of recursive, general purpose zk-SNARKs—a remarkable technological achievement—and builds on the pioneering work of other ZK researchers in Ethereum, Zcash, and other crypto-economic systems.”
Jill Carlson, Principal of Slow Ventures, expressed, “Mina Protocol is solving one of the most pervasive and insidious problems that exist in the world of decentralized technology: empowering verification of the network at scale. Mina will empower individuals, almost regardless of their resources, to participate in building on, using, and validating the decentralized nature of the network.”
Tess Rinearson, VP of Engineering at Interchain GmbH, said, “Mina’s novel use of zk-SNARKs is a radical change to the way that we think about and build blockchains, literally changing what goes into a “block” and the way that they’re “chained” together. This redesign allows the Mina blockchain to be downloaded and verified astonishingly quickly, letting a wider range of users run their own nodes and allowing for networks that are simultaneously simpler and more decentralized.”
Evan Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder of O(1) Labs, the team behind Mina, shared “The Mina Foundation is essential for the continuation of Mina’s decentralized growth and development. Mina represents the cutting edge of cryptography and blockchain excellence, and we are pleased to announce technical and operational leaders from our industry as board members.”
The Mina Foundation’s primary activities will consist of supporting the decentralized and diverse community with events and meetups, increasing the visibility and accessibility of its network via strategic marketing and partnership efforts and by maintaining tangible and intangible community assets such as trademarks, copyrights, social media channels, website, and other branding materials. Additionally the Mina Foundation will continue to prioritize the usability, sustainability, security, and governance of the Mina currency and Mina Protocol with key services, tools, and blockchain maintenance.
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About Mina Foundation
The Mina Foundation is the non-profit steward of the Mina Protocol, the world’s lightest blockchain. The Foundation supports the protocol by issuing grants to third parties that make significant contributions and by maintaining & managing community assets. Board members include Former Executive Director at ZCash Foundation Josh Cincinnati, Principal of Slow Ventures Jill Carlson, VP of Engineering at Interchain GmbH and Tendermint developer Tess Rinearson, Fund Director and Joint Legal Counsel of International Management Services Sean Inggs, and CEO of O(1) Labs, the team that incubated Mina, Evan Shapiro.
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.
