Blockchains are essentially digital ledgers which record all the transactions occurring over it. While the value proposition of the technology is interesting, time has revealed many issues plaguing blockchains. One of the major problems with blockchains is that of size. Since all transactions have to be recorded on a blockchain, they can grow a lot in terms of size. The problem this pose is that running a node requires a lot more energy and computational power as it has to store the entire history of the blockchain. However, there is one project in the market that is targeting this issue. Mina is regarded to be the lightest blockchain in the whole market.
What is Mina?
Mina was created by Evan Shapiro and Izaak Meckler in 2017. However, after years of development the mainnet was launched in March 2021. Mina is a lightweight blockchain which is designed to always have a size of just 22 kBs. This allows anyone to operate and hold a node on the blockchain without any extensive power of hardware requirements.
The project is also aiming to bring greater decentralization to the blockchain industry as blockchains like Bitcoin which requires expensive hardware to be mined can lead to centralization. Any miner that employs more resources can gain dominance of the network. However, with Mina’s size held constant regardless of the number of transactions on the network, it ensures that decentralization is preserved.
To enable the protocol in fulfilling its goal, the development team has employed a novel technology, zk-SNARKS. Zk-SNARKS technology is used for the creation of payment blockchains that does not require each node to record the entire transaction history of the blockchain.
Future outlook
Mina cryptocurrency has shown phenomenal performance during the year. The cryptocurrency’s mainnet was launched only a couple of months ago but it has managed to enter the top hundred cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The community is growing at a phenomenal rate and is expected to continue its growth at this rate. The team is also working rigorously on development of the platform. A recent collaboration with Snapps was announced which is expected to increase the programmability and node-stability of the network. Moreover, Mina is also building a bridge to Ethereum.
The strong fundamnetals coupled with the recent developments indicate a bright future for the cryptocurrency. According to the estimates of Digital Coin Price, the cryptocurrency is expected to be operating at a price level of $9.2 in a year’s time while the five-year projection places it at $14.68.
