The team at Finoa is honored to have been chosen as the preferred institutional custodian to support MINA Blockchain Protocol for the mainnet launch of their MINA Token by offering custody services to initial backers of this exciting project. 

We are convinced of the value behind the MINA network and share the vision of a lightweight blockchain that prioritizes open and private access to financial services and is powered by its participants. Even further, we are optimistic about the upcoming suite of tools for developers to build applications that treat users’ data responsibly and equitably. By integrating MINA into our exclusive array of disruptive projects, we are further promoting the evolution and improvement of the global financial paradigm.

MINA is the world’s lightest blockchain. Through an elegant use of recursive zero-knowledge proofs or zk-SNARKs, MINA can replace a blockchain with an easily verifiable, consistent-sized cryptographic proof. This way, MINA reduces the amount of data each user needs to download when joining the network. Instead of verifying the entire chain from the beginning of time, participants fully verify the network and transactions using recursive zk-SNARKs. Nodes can then store this small proof, as opposed to the entire chain. And because it’s a consistent size, Mina stays accessible and can be accessed from any device — even as it scales to many users and accumulates years of transaction data. 

The team behind MINA has been able to build a robust network for value exchange, which guarantees scalability for transactions while promoting decentralization in the network without compromising on security, access, and privacy. The idea behind its architecture is that anybody will be able to quickly sync and verify the blockchain. On top of this, Mina enables the development of Snapps, decentralized applications that leverage zk-SNARKS to ensure privacy and do not expose users’ data on the public blockchain.

As a proof-of-stake blockchain, MINA relies on participants of the network to stake their tokens to produce blocks. As an alternative, users can also choose to delegate their MINA to block producers, nodes that are in charge of verifying SNARK computations to create blocks with valid transactions. Thanks to Ouroboros Samasika (the chosen consensus algorithm), block producers can stay online as is convenient, so uptime can be thought of as being available to accept work. A great advantage of this is that slashing is not a necessity to penalize block producers that come up with invalid transactions. Bad actors only opt out of potential rewards and risk being banned from the network in case malicious behavior persists. Taking this into account, block producers and delegators only need to focus on minimizing opportunity costs. Users may delegate to one block producer per address only, so they would rationally choose to delegate to block producers with maximum uptime and low latency.

As an added service, Finoa enables customers holding MINA to delegate their tokens to a selection of prime block producers for their convenience from day one. Our team will also dedicate resources to building a special feature for managing MINA delegations (expected Summer of 2021). That way, our users will have the ability to freely make strategic portfolio decisions from one place while maintaining the peace of mind that their funds are safe. Moreover, staying true to Finoa’s vision of openness and inclusion, we aspire to continuously add staking providers to our exclusive list of block producers, which we expect that in turn will enable custom staking combinations for delegators.

“Finoa is known for the quality of its professional investor services, and this partnership will allow us to give financial institutions the ability to hold Mina tokens and participate in the growing Mina community.” - Evan Shapiro, CEO, and Co-Founder of O(1) Labs, the team behind Mina.

With a constant size of just 22kb, Mina enables scalability, security, and accessibility, powering a more efficient and fair Web 3.0, where anyone can participate, build, and exchange. Designed with advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs, the Mina Protocol brings a new era of blockchain accessibility — a movement that Finoa is proud to support.

“Institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies is key for the mainstreaming of the token economy, and so we’re very pleased to support Mina with our custody platform and expand options for institutional investors to participate.” - Henrik Gebbing, CEO and Co-Founder of Finoa.

We are looking forward to seeing MINA evolve into a continuously growing network with a very active community and a wide variety of use cases in the industry. MINA’s minimalistic solution offers commonly underestimated advantages that remain true to the original ideals of blockchain technology which certainly brings a change of pace to a complex industry where access tends to be limited to a few. We are excited to be among the first companies to become an active part of the network and are optimistic about the future this new partnership will bring.

Institutional investors who wish to diversify their portfolios, get exposure to, and participate in the Mina ecosystem, will be able to rely on Finoa’s services from the genesis block onwards. This partnership highlights Finoa’s international positioning, lightning-fast integration of new blockchains, and drive to speed up institutional crypto adoption.

Finoa is always looking to provide support for new and in-demand tokens. If you are planning on getting exposure to MINA, or if you are interested in learning more about our future roadmap and additional token- and protocol support, please reach out to us here.