The Mina Foundation Transparency Report is a quarterly report that includes key platform metrics and protocol developments, among other important updates.

General Update

zkIgnite

zkIgnite is a cohort-based, community-governed grant program for developers to turn their ideas into full-fledged businesses.

Cohort 3 builders presented their midpoint milestones during the week of May 20, 2024, which electors then reviewed and voted on - you can find the presentations here. Five technical reviewers evaluated each project, and those who received 3 or more ‘yes’ votes are considered successful. Based on this criteria, 21 out of 25 Cohort 3 projects successfully delivered their midpoint milestones, marking an 84% delivery success rate. ‍

‍Projects are paid 33.3% upfront (upon passing KYC), then 33.3% after successful completion of their midpoint milestones, and the final 33.3% upon completion of their final milestones. A team of technical reviewers will assess and vote on delivery at the final milestone dates, set for mid-July, 2024. The total committed grant amount is 1,279,431 MINA, of which 330,309 MINA, corresponding to midpoint milestones, was paid to Cohort 3 projects on June 5, 2024.‍

‍25 electors and 7 technical reviewers received a combined total of 230,000 MINA tokens for their participation in Cohort 3.

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‍Mina Navigators

Mina Navigators is an ongoing developer program designed for early to mid lifecycle teams to experiment and build on Mina. Participants are rewarded for their participation with monthly grants.

As of June, 2024, 86 developers have received Navigator badges, and 2,461,000 MINA tokens have been committed (with lockup) or paid out to Navigators. 

A team of technical reviewers were responsible for evaluating Navigators’ month-over-month milestones, checking GitHub commits, and providing feedback on the work. The reviewers use a set of public criteria to determine the monthly grant amounts paid to each Navigator. The reviewers earn 5k MINA per month for their efforts. A total of 110,000 MINA has been paid to technical reviewers since the beginning of the Navigators program.  

Season 1 of the Navigators program concluded at the end of April, with 62 builders participating and 48 projects in development across verticals including: DeFi, gaming, identity, and more. 

In May, 2024, participants of the program showcased their contributions to a panel of community electors to compete for grand prizes. 12 finalists presented demos and six have been awarded first, second, and third prize grants from an available pool of 225,000 MINA (split into 2x 50k MINA, 2x 37,5k MINA and 2x 25k MINA prizes). 

The program was relaunched for Season 2 in June, 2024 with a new structure and several improvements based on Season 1 learnings, with the goal of funding at least 100 projects over the course of 2024.

This season of the program presents developers with two grant tracks (Starter and Growth), and also introduces a Navigator’s Exploration Team (NExT), comprising experts from o1Labs, Mina Foundation, and experienced builders from the community. 

The first set of proposals for Season 2 have now gone live on MinaResearch forum and are now open for public comments. Four proposals have already received approval for funding, with more expected in the coming months.

‍Core Grants

Mina Foundation’s Core Grants Program aims to support projects committed to improving the Mina Protocol, focused on two primary funding areas. The first relates to ecosystem advancements, covering specific deliverables in areas that promote the growth of the Mina ecosystem. This can include anything from token standards, to zkOracles, DA layers and more. The second area is focused on supporting public goods. By actively participating in open discussions and submitting proposals, community members not only play a key role in shaping the vision of Mina but also have the opportunity to secure funding.

A public facing project board is updated to keep the community informed, supported by regular community calls by the Mina Foundation team.

In Q2 2024, under the Core Program Ecosystem Advancement Track, Mina Foundation published RFPs for:

• A Tokenomics on Mina Analysis and Report - See here
• A JavaScript Wallet Provider API Standard - See here

The proposals are currently under review by Mina Foundation prior to selection.

On a related note, a beta version of the Fungible token Standard has been published (see here) which began as a community published RFC and was brought to a beta version by the Mina Foundation.

Road to Upgrade

Ahead of Mina Protocol’s mainnet upgrade, Mina Foundation, o1Labs, and community members participated in extensive testing, which concluded with the upgrade of Mina’s Devnet in April, 2024, and several end-to-end dry-runs of the full Berkeley Upgrade process in May, 2024.

The Berkeley Upgrade was successfully completed on June 5, 2024, bringing enhanced programmability to Mina Protocol’s mainnet, unlocking new use cases and development potential for the ecosystem. 

To support this, three key features have now been implemented, as voted on by the community through on-chain voting: 

• Easier zkApp programmability (MIP4): simplifying the process of creating zkApps, making it more accessible to developers.
• A more powerful proof system, Kimchi (MIP3): enhancing security and supporting the added programmability.
• The removal of supercharged rewards (MIP1): a temporary incentive to boost staking adoption early on, but their removal ensures equal rewards for all and reduces inflation.

As of the upgrade, there are over 50 projects building on Mina, and with various projects already launched on Mina Protocol’s mainnet. 

Finally, the last Road to Upgrade community call took place in May, and has now been replaced by Illuminate, a new series of virtual town halls, which provide insight and updates on key developments from across workstreams at Mina Foundation, as well as ecosystem projects.

Decentralized Protocol Governance

In May, the Mina Foundation Decentralized Protocol Governance Team published a governance vision proposal for the Mina Ecosystem. Evan Shapiro, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, published a high-level summary of this proposal. 

The team reviewed the community's feedback using a custom-made Discord bot and a Q&A public discussion using Discord Events. More details are available in the #announcements channel of the Protocol Governance category on Mina's Discord server. 

The team is currently working on the MIP upgrade proposal for a new and enhanced MIP process (and MIP template) with multiple categories (initially engineering, governance, and economics) and corresponding Subject Matter Experts. The goal is to share it with the community in the coming weeks.

You can find more updates and join the protocol governance discussions on Mina's Discord server, under the Protocol Governance category, in the following channels:

• #announcements - the most important updates;
• #surveys - open surveys to gather everyone's thoughts and ideas to improve proposals;
• #general-discussion - the primary place for all protocol governance discussions;
• #minaresearch - general questions or discussions related to topics from MinaResearch.