LD Capital: Can Mina’s personnel changes lead to project recovery?

Source: LD Capital

Overview: As a zero-knowledge proof project, Mina has won the favor of many top crypto investment institutions. However, as the token selling pressure gradually increases and the market The general environment is bearish, and the price of MINA tokens has fallen. Currently, the Mina Foundation has undergone major personnel changes. Former COO Kurt Hemecker has officially replaced founder Evan Shapiro as the new CEO.

The development of the Mina protocol in the past three years may not be satisfactory, and the ecological development is basically at a standstill. With the recent recovery of the market environment, network activity has increased slightly.

Judging from the current market performance, MINA tokens are close to full circulation. The token price has exceeded the high point in February 23 and the historical chip concentration area, and there is little resistance in the upper space.

1. Project Introduction

Mina Protocol is a lightweight blockchain based on Zero Knowledge Proof technology, aiming to provide efficient, secure and privacy-protecting decentralization. Centralized Applications (DApps). The team behind the project comes from O(1)Labs in the United States, which was founded in 2017 and had previously founded the Coda project (the predecessor of Mina).

The biggest feature of the Mina protocol is to use the data compression capability of zero-knowledge proof to maintain the block size at about 22 KB. The core of Mina's ability to achieve a constant block size is the use of [recursive zero-knowledge proof], that is, zk-SNARK technology is used to compress the block into a single proof every time a block is produced, and each new SNARK proof Contains past SNARK proofs, nodes only need to detect this proof, and do not need to check the entire transaction history.

This way, anyone can easily download and verify the entire blockchain without relying on a third-party service provider. This makes Mina Protocol the lightest blockchain in the world and the only full-node blockchain capable of running on any device.

2. Financing information

Mina has conducted three rounds of financing in total, with a total financing amount of US$140 million. Investors include Coinbase Ventures, MetaStable, Polychain Capital, Bixin Ventures, Top institutions such as Three Arrows Capital, HashKey Capital, Fenbushi Capital, etc.

According to the initial token distribution plan, as of January 3, 2024, a total of 205 million (20.5%) of the tokens allocated to investors have been fully unlocked.

3. Network situation

Judging from the activities of the Mina network, in the early days of the mainnet launch, network transaction volume was not active. Three years later, Mina’s network transaction volume has not been Big changes have occurred. As the market environment recovers, the past three months have been a period of high activity on Mina's network.

Judging from the number of snark proofs generated, it is basically consistent with the activity of network transactions. Snark fees are paid in the form of MINA tokens. Judging from the average daily transaction fees, the price of MINA tokens was higher in the early days of the mainnet launch, so even when the number of snark proofs generated is small, the fees will still remain relatively high. In 2022 As the token price falls during the year, the average daily transaction fees are also decreasing. Recently, as online transactions have become more active, the average daily transaction fees have increased slightly.

4. Token Economy

MINA’s initial token supply is 1 billion, with no upper limit on the total supply. After the mainnet is launched, additional block rewards will be issued. MINA is the one in the network that 1) mainly performs payment functions and is used to purchase SNARK certificates; 2) pledges, participates in block production and obtains block rewards.

MINA’s current inflation rate reaches about 11%. The token will be launched in April 2021, which also means that the annual inflation rate is about 3.7%.

MINA tokens are currently basically close to full circulation, with only a small amount allocated to foundations, teams and communities that have not been unlocked.

The 24-hour trading volume of this token is approximately US$170 million, and the transaction turnover rate is extremely high (24-hour trading volume/market value ≈116%).

Judging from the price trend of tokens, it has been in a relatively low range in the past year. It has now exceeded the price high in February 2023, and has broken through the concentration of chips. area, the resistance in the upper space is relatively small. Token trading volume has also begun to increase significantly in the past half month.

5. On-chain positions

According to Mina block browser data, the current total holdings of the top 15 currency-holding addresses is 400 million, accounting for 36% of the total supply. %.

Currently, addresses with a higher number of transactions are temporarily defined as pledge entrustment addresses, and Coinlist wallet addresses also provide pledge entrustment services, which means that among the top 15 addresses, the proportion of pledge entrustment address holdings reaches 20.4%

The total holdings of centralized exchange addresses are 73.83 million, accounting for 6.7%.

The team or related stakeholders’ positions accounted for 2.3%.

As a PoS-type public chain, MINA tokens will have a relatively high pledge ratio, which means that there will be relatively few tokens circulating in the secondary market. Among the top 15 addresses, the proportion of token holdings that can only be temporarily determined to be independent personal addresses is only about 4%.

Judging from the position changes of addresses on the chain, MINA’s chip structure is relatively stable.

VI. Recent Major Events

Mina Foundation has currently undergone major personnel changes

On December 19, 2023, the Mina Foundation Chief operating officer Kurt Hemecker has officially succeeded founder Evan Shapiro as the new CEO, who will transition to chairman of the board and advisor. Hemecker, a former executive at Diem Association (formerly Libra) and PayPal, will use his business development skills to advocate for the adoption of Mina’s zero-knowledge proof technology across multiple verticals.