Mina jumps 33% as OpenMina node browser concept gains traction

Mina is up over 33% to $0.855 in the 24 hours following its announcement of the OpenMina node browser concept.

Since Jan. 8, MINA has been trending higher, reflecting the general crypto market uptrend. However, price action exploded on Jan. 25, as the daily candle swung 34% to the upside, topping out at $0.741. It closed the day at $0.687, managing to retain most of the gains.

Following three subsequent selling days, Mina bulls returned on Jan. 29 to lift the price 23% higher. Jan. 30 sees bullish momentum holding, taking the price to $0.951 to post a 24-week high.

Anyone can run a node through a browser

On Jan. 26, Mina announced partnering with Viable Systems to launch OpenMina – a web node browser concept. The accessibility of this concept is hoped to attract more node operators, thus increasing the network’s decentralization.

Mina Foundation CEO, Evan Shapiro, said decentralization is a “core value” of the project. By enabling node participation via a web browser, he expects node growth, in turn improving the network’s decentralization and security.

“Decentralization has always been a core value of the Mina Ecosystem. Making participation in the Mina network at a node level so much more accessible increases decentralization and therefore security of the entire ecosystem.”

OpenMina removes barriers to node operation, including expensive hardware investment and complicated technical setups, enabling a blockchain node to run through a browser such as Chrome or Firefox.

The low minimal hardware requirements mean OpenMina can be run on a mobile phone.

What is Mina?

Mina was rebranded from Coda Protocol in October 2020. However, the project’s goal of “swapping out” a traditional, bulky blockchain setup in favor of cryptographic proof remains.

The whitepaper described building “a more ideal blockchain architecture” using zero-knowledge proofs. With traditional blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, the accumulation of data leads to chains that are hundreds of gigabytes in size, which will only grow over time.

“Mina is a layer-1 blockchain with a 22KB blockchain & zero knowledge smart contracts (“zkApps”) written in TypeScript.”

Mina differs by having a blockchain that remains at 22 kilobytes, from which the current network consensus can be verified via the Cardano-based Ouroboros Samisika Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.

Supporting this are Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs,) which provides cryptographic proof of authenticated data without revealing that data but still enabling a trail to the genesis block, thus recording a network state.