What is Mina protocol.
In this article I will guide you through the process of setting up a Mina node. After that, I'll show you how to generate a pair of keys for network use. Finally, you'll see how to connect to the network and start producing blocks.
* What is Mina?
Mina is the first cryptocurrency protocol with a concise blockchain. Today's cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum store hundreds of gigabytes of data, and as time goes on, their blocks will only grow in size.
With Mina, however, no matter how much usage increases, the blockchain always remains the same size
Each time a Mina node produces a new block, it also generates a SNARK proof that verifies that the block was valid. All nodes can then store small evidence, unlike the entire chain.
By not having to worry about block size, the Mina protocol allows for a blockchain that is decentralized to scale.
*Requirement
Software: macOS, Linux (currently supports Debian 9 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) or any Docker host
Windows is not officially supported at this time. However, community members were able to configure nodes using the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
Hardware: Sending and receiving mine does not require special hardware, but running a blockchain manufacturer in the Mine network currently requires: at least one 8-core processor at least 16 GB of RAM.
Network: Connection of at least 1 Mbps.
*Installation
Follow the steps below to install the latest Stable Mina 1.3.0, or visit the Github Release Page to discover and install pre-release (Beta) versions.
*Configure port forwarding and any firewalls
If you are running a firewall, you should allow traffic on TCP port 8302. In addition, unless -external-ip YOUR_IPflag is provided, the daemon will use HTTPS (443) and HTTP (80) to try to determine own IP address.
*Generating a key pair
To create a key pair for Mainnet or to fully participate in a Mina test network, the first step is to generate a key pair, which consists of a public key and a private key.
First, make sure you have a folder on your system where you can store your key files. We recommend using ~ / keyspliant.
Then make sure that the permissions are set correctly in this folder so that unwanted processes do not access these files.
*Connect to the network
The first step in connecting to Mainnet is installing the latest daemon version.
*Start a node
Run the following command to start a Mina node instance and connect to the live network:
mina daemon --peer-list-url https://storage.googleapis.com/mina-seed-lists/mainnet_seeds.txt
*Check your account balance
We can check the balance of all our accounts using this command:
mina accounts listRate limitation
Currently, nodes in the network will limit the reception of messages from a specific node. Starting with version 1.3.0, your node will also follow this rate limit when submitting transactions.
Specifically, the limit is currently set at 10 transactions every 15 seconds calculated over a 5-minute window. If you try to send transactions faster than this rate, your node will queue them up and delete them as the older transactions expire from the window where the rate limit is calculated.
MINA offers an elegant solution: replacing the blockchain with an easy-to-verify, consistently sized cryptographic proof. Mine dramatically reduces the amount of data that each user has to download.
Instead of checking the entire chain from the beginning of time, participants completely check the network and transactions using recursive evidence of zero knowledge (or zk-SNARKs).
The nodes can then store the small piece of evidence, unlike the whole chain. And because of its constant size, Mina remains accessible - even if it extends to many users and accumulates years of transaction data.