The Mina Ecosystem, a group representing several teams behind the privacy-focused blockchain protocol Mina, has raised $92 million in a token sale and plans to use the funds to attract more software developers.
Three Arrows Capital and FTX Ventures co-led the raise, with Alan Howard, Brevan Howard, Amber Group, Blockchain.com, Circle Ventures, Pantera Capital and others participating, according to a statement from the Mina Ecosystem today.
The Mina Ecosystem is a collective involving several groups, including the Mina Foundation, Evan Shapiro, CEO of the Mina Foundation, told The Block. He declined to name the other members or share the terms of the token sale, but said the Ecosystem members have raised the total amount between them. Usually, tokens are offered at a discount to venture capital investors in private sales. The price of one MINA token is currently around $1.80.
With fresh capital at hand, the Mina Ecosystem aims to bring more developers to the Mina protocol. To that end, “effectively all” of the raised amount will go towards developer grants, said Shapiro.
Mina Protocol is a Layer 1 blockchain network that helps developers build privacy-focused decentralized applications, or dapps. The protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs technology, meaning users don’t have to share their private information when using dapps built on the Mina protocol, said Shapiro. For example, a user can prove they’re older than 21 but won’t have to reveal their exact age.
Giving another example, Shapiro said currently, to vote for a DAO, voters have to expose their voting record on-chain. With dapps built on the Mina Protocol, users won’t have to reveal their history in order to vote, he said.
“We’ve chosen to double-down on supporting the Mina Ecosystem because we believe strongly in Mina’s fundamentals as a unique Layer 1, as well as the team’s unparalleled expertise in zero-knowledge technology,” Zhu Su, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital, said in a statement. Three Arrows Capital also co-led O(1) Labs’ $10.9 million fundraise in October 2020. O(1) Labs is one of the development teams behind the Mina protocol.
Shapiro declined to share how much the Mina Ecosystem has raised to date.
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Source: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/138264/mina-protocol-ecosystem-token-sale-three-arrows-ftx?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss