First published 24 March 2021, the day after mainnet. Expanded in October 2026 so a short proof is not described as a private payment, and so the opening distribution is not described as a cap. Mina is a proof-of-stake chain. It was called Coda until 29 September 2020, after a trademark dispute. Evan Shapiro is the person most associated with it. o1 Labs built the software. Mainnet opened on 23 March 2021. The design compresses the chain into a short proof, so checking it does not mean downloading every old block. The slogan was 22 kilobytes. A later measurement published by the project came in smaller, around 11. A short proof is not a small balance. What is Zcash (ZEC)? hides a payment by default. Mina does not. A proof here says the chain is the chain. It does not hide who paid whom.
The opening distribution was 805,385,694 MINA. Block rewards are new coins. The launch note described inflation starting near 12 percent a year and stepping down toward 7, if people delegated. There is no ceiling. A dashboard rate is that version of the schedule. A price times 805 million is the opening figure, not the live count. Some of that opening pile was locked. An unlock was coins that already existed.
The launch design let a holder delegate without posting a bond that can be slashed. Delegating points your MINA at a block producer. It is not a savings account, and a design can change. Staking is a lock and a queue, not a savings account. This page will not walk through a node or a proof. A Mina address is not an Ethereum address. The wrong network is still the wrong city. Nothing here is an instruction to delegate, to generate a proof, or to buy MINA.
