How to Buy Mina (MINA)

Buy Mina (MINA) through Binance

• Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange which is the largest exchange in the world in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. It was founded in 2017 and is registered in the Cayman Islands. Binance was founded by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high frequency trading software.

Buy Mina (MINA) through Coinbase

• Coinbase is a convenient and cheap way to buy Ethereum and the platform is open to 200+ countries). Coinbase will sell you CRO for a variable fee that depends on your payment method (credit cards have a higher fee than wire transfers), order size and market volatility. Here’s how you buy Ethereum on Coinbase: Open a Coinbase account Add your payment method (Credit card or bank account) Go to “Buy/Sell” and select the amount of Ethereum you desire Click “Buy Cronos”

Buy Mina (MINA) through Crypto.com

• Crypto.com is a cryptocurrency exchange company based in Singapore. As of May 2022, the company reportedly had 50 million customers and 4,000 employees. The exchange issues a token, Cronos.The company was initially founded in Hong Kong by Bobby Bao, Gary Or, Kris Marszalek, and Rafael Melo in 2016 as “Monaco”. In 2018, the company was renamed as Crypto.com following a purchase of a domain owned by cryptography researcher and professor Matt Blaze. Domain sellers valued the domain at US$5–10 million.

Buy Mina (MINA) through Gate.io

• Gate.io is a crypto exchange founded in the fall of 2017. The platform is a part of Gate Technology Inc corporation, and has a registration address in Virginia, USA. The platform does not have an official license. Its interface is available for working in three versions: English, Chinese and Japanese.

Buy Mina (MINA) through MEXC

• Founded in 2018, MEXC Global is known as the exchange of high performance and mega transaction matching technology. The team at MEXC Global are some of the first movers and pioneers of financial and blockchain technology. Currently, MEXC Global caters to 10 M+ users in more than 170 countries around the world and we have just started.

Step 3 – Withdraw Your Mina (MINA)

Once you decide on an exchange, open an account and buy your MINA. Make sure to withdraw the MINA from the exchange to your personal wallet.

Never leave coins on an exchange, as you risk losing them all if that exchange gets hacked or shuts down (which has happened in the past).

OVERVIEW

What Is Mina Protocol’s Main Objective?

Mina is working on achieving an efficient distributed payment system that enables users to natively verify the platform right from the genesis block. Its technical whitepaper calls this a “succinct blockchain.”

The protocol uses Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs), a cryptographic proof that enables someone to authenticate information without revealing said information. However, enabling a user to trace the platform back to its genesis block can be impractical in a large network. As such, Mina incrementally computes SNARKS that concentrate only on the last few blocks — meaning that end-users check that zk-SNARK-compressed proof, instead of a block’s entire transaction history.

At the heart of Mina protocol is MINA, its native currency, which functions as a utility coin and medium of exchange.

What Makes Mina Unique?

Mina Protocol is a unique blockchain platform with several innovative features that set it apart from other blockchain networks. Here are some of the key things that make Mina unique:

1. Lightweight Blockchain: Mina’s blockchain is designed to be extremely lightweight, with a constant size of just 22kb, making it one of the smallest blockchains in the world. This is achieved through the use of a technology called “zk-SNARKs”, which allows for the verification of transactions without having to store the entire transaction history on the blockchain.

2. Decentralized and Secure: Mina is a fully decentralized blockchain network, which means that it is not controlled by any central authority or individual. This makes it more secure against attacks and censorship.

3. Privacy: Mina allows for private transactions on its network, meaning that users can transact without revealing their identities or transaction amounts.

4. Programmable: Mina is a programmable blockchain, which means that developers can build decentralized applications (dApps) on the platform using programming languages such as Ocaml.

5. Scalability: Mina’s lightweight blockchain allows it to scale efficiently, even as the network grows. This is because nodes on the network do not have to store the entire transaction history, which reduces the amount of storage and computational resources needed to operate the network.

6. Sustainability: Mina uses a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm, which is more energy-efficient than the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm used by many other blockchain networks. This makes it more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

In summary, Mina’s lightweight, decentralized, and programmable blockchain, combined with its focus on privacy, scalability, and sustainability, makes it a unique and innovative blockchain platform with many potential use cases.

How Does Mina Protocol Function?

Mina is similar to Bitcoin, apart from how it handles transactions, but also employs the account model used in Ethereum.

In this respect, the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that the state of the Bitcoin blockchain contains a list of unspent coins, while Ethereum’s state is made up of account balances.

Mina, on the other hand, uses a prover (or snarker, if you will), an equivalent of a miner, to ensure each block commits to the state.

Mina employs the Ouroboros Samasika, a type of PoS mechanism specially designed for succinct decentralized networks since it provides bootstrapping from a genesis block.

Succinct blockchains contain two major functions: verify and update. Verification touches on consensus, blockchain summary and blocks, while the update function interacts with consensus and chain summary.

Apart from the above implementations, the project uses a parallel scan state to optimize transaction processing speed, which works by grouping unproven blocks and assigning the process to parallel provers.

Major Mina Protocol Participants

Mina is all about revolutionizing the current blockchain landscape where most platforms have verifiers such as miners/stakers and light clients who act as third parties when verifying transactions.

Mina takes a different approach by having multiple participants, each handling a specific function on the decentralized network.

The three major roles include verifiers, block producers and snarkers.

• Verifiers
• Verifiers interact with zk-SNARKS that deal with certifying the consensus information. Each Mina protocol user is considered a verifier, provided that their devices can handle a 22 KB chain and withstand a few milliseconds of processing time.

Block Producers

Block producers take the form of stakers or miners and earn block rewards and transaction fee payments. Interestingly, the protocol doesn’t slash incentives that go to block producers. This category of participants allows Mina users to delegate their coins to them.

Apart from bundling transactions into blocks, block producers also have to SNARK an equivalent number of previously committed trades as failure to do so during block production would lead to incomplete blocks and other nodes rejecting their validity.

If a block producer wants to incorporate 10 transactions on the chain, they must also SNARK trades from the front of the queue. However, they have the option to produce the SNARK or use those generated by a special group of participants called snarkers.

‍## Snarkers

Snarkers, also known as provers, produce zk-SNARKs used in verifying transactions.

Block producers pay snarkers from the overall transaction fees they receive for adding new blocks. However, to qualify for the fees, they have to post bids. Note that a snarker’s zk-SNARK needs to be used in a block while the block producer who uses it is responsible for incentivizing the snarker.

This creates a business economy where multiple snarkers can post bids tied to the same transaction. Block producers, on the other hand, are in for the profits and will choose the bid with the lowest fees. Consequently, snarkers are challenged to produce low-cost SNARKS.

How Transactions Happen On Mina

The process starts with a user initiating a transaction, after which the trade goes to the mempool, a pool of valid but unconfirmed transactions.

Next, snarkers take over by making proofs or SNARKS. The process follows with the selection of a block producer (BP) to bundle transactions into a block. Note that a BP sifts through the mempool for profitable transactions.

Then, the BP chooses a SNARK according to the rules in the consensus mechanism.

Note that a block producer scans through the bids for the lowest-priced SNARK. In addition, recently added transactions have an updated SNARKS order book.

Next, it’s time to incorporate the SNARKS in a block, then add the block to the chain and update the network. Snarked transactions are removed from the chain to help keep the size of the protocol constant.

Then, the block producer upgrades the protocol’s zk-SNARKS.

Finally, the new block becomes immutably part of the chain.