Least Authority, a comprehensive security consulting service, recently concluded an audit of Pickles, Mina’s inductive zk-SNARK composition system. For this audit, Least Authority performed research, investigation, and review of Pickles followed by issue reporting, along with mitigation and remediation instructions.
The audit did not identify any security-relevant issues. See the full report and findings here.
Following the completion of the report, two suggestions pertaining to documentation and variable name consistency have been partially implemented.
Pickles Highlights
- Pickles is Mina’s recursion layer.
- In other words, it is the protocol that creates proofs of proofs of proofs, helping Mina maintain its constant size of 22kb.
- Pickles abstracts away the messy details of the underlying cryptography and acts as the basis for developers to build private, scalable smart contracts on Mina.
- Pickles allows developers to construct proofs with zk-SNARKs and combine them in flexible ways in order to deliver incremental verifiable computation.
- There is no trusted setup.
Mina Foundation and its ecosystem partners value security highly. This audit follows Least Authority’s report from last year on the Transaction Logic and Transaction Pool implementation of the Mina protocol.
About Mina Protocol
Mina is the world’s lightest blockchain, powered by participants. Rather than apply brute computing force, Mina uses advanced cryptography and recursive zk-SNARKs to design an entire blockchain that is about 22kb, the size of a couple of tweets. It is the first layer-1 to enable efficient implementation and easy programmability of zero knowledge smart contracts (zkApps). With its unique privacy features and ability to connect to any website, Mina is building a private gateway between the real world and crypto—and the secure, democratic future we all deserve.
