Mina Staking and Ethereum

A few months ago Extropy published a survey on Ethereum staking solutions, in this article we introduce staking on a new PoS blockchain, Mina.

Mina is known for being the world’s lightest blockchain! Individuals or businesses can contribute to network security by becoming nodes or block producers. They can contribute to transaction cost reduction by becoming SNARK producers, or they can do both. Extropy.io is a genesis member of Mina and has been running its own block producer and “SNARK worker” since the mainnet launch.

Mina is the first cryptocurrency protocol with a succinct blockchain. Current cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum store hundreds of gigabytes of data, and as time goes on, their blockchains will only increase in size. With Mina however, no matter how much the usage grows, the blockchain always stays the same size — about 22kb. This means participants can quickly sync and verify the network.

This breakthrough is made possible due to zk-SNARKs — a type of succinct cryptographic proof. Each time a Mina node produces a new block, it also generates a SNARK proof verifying that the block was valid. All nodes can then store the small proof, as opposed to the entire chain. By not having to worry about block size, the Mina protocol enables a blockchain that is decentralized at scale.

Mina Use Cases

Private access to internet services. One prominent example is given by Teller Finance, an algorithmic credit risk platform building decentralized lending dapp using Mina, to pioneer a new generation of DeFi dapps that will allow users to access critical on-chain services without sharing their personal data. I.e. it will be possible to prove that a credit score is above a certain threshold, according to a trusted source such as Credit Karma, without having to share private information.

Permissionless web oracles. Mina doesn’t require a data oracle like other cryptocurrency blockchains. It can just take a snapshot of data relevant to the decentralized application from multiple websites.

One private internet login. Mina is even working to make it possible to turn email accounts into zero-knowledge proof snapshots, meaning you could log into applications using your email without actually revealing your email address!