Mina Launches Adversarial Testnet in Lead-Up to Mainnet Launch to Ensure Network Strength and Resilience

By AIT News Desk On Dec 23, 2020

Mina launches “Testworld” to ensure network security ahead of Mainnet

Mina, the world’s lightest blockchain, launches its adversarial testnet, “Testworld,” to uncover vulnerabilities and ensure the network is resilient in the lead-up to mainnet. Participants can earn up to 1% of the total supply in token rewards across both adversarial and concurrent bug bounty programs. Additionally, participants can gain eligibility to participate in the Genesis token grants program that will support them in becoming mainnet block producers.

Evan Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder of O(1) Labs, the team behind Mina, expressed, “As we prepare for an upcoming mainnet launch, this adversarial testnet phase is key to ensuring Mina’s network is strong and resilient to hacks.”

Adversarial testnet participants can win token rewards in a variety of ways:

Uncovering vulnerabilities
Accruing testnet tokens
Scoring high points on the leaderboard

Testworld participants will also be eligible to qualify for a Genesis grant, with up to 780 slots still available. This is the last opportunity community members will have to qualify for a grant before mainnet launches.

To-date, Mina’s testnet has hit a series of milestones that makes its forthcoming mainnet one of the most highly anticipated projects to be launched in 2021:

The first production system to implement a recursive zk-SNARK with no trusted setup—Pickles
1,200 users from over 180 countries have participated on the Mina testnet, with 10,000+ community members participating in the greater Mina ecosystem—on track to be larger than Polkadot, Cardano, and Avalanche
220 Genesis Founding Members—core contributors who are highly skilled in Mina’s technology
25 Technical community ambassadors from 15+ countries

Mina’s unique deployment of recursive zk-SNARKs ensures the blockchain always stays the same size—about 20 kilobytes (the size of a few tweets). This unique application of zero knowledge proofs enables Mina to remain lightweight and easy for anyone to participate as a node. Additionally, Mina’s consensus mechanism allows for unlimited validator slots, and the documentation and tooling makes it easy for people who are new to crypto to get started.