MinaCon: An Inflection Point

MinaCon: An Inflection Point

Building with ZK isn’t always straightforward. 

It requires persistence—whether you’re wrestling with an elusive bug, navigating undocumented library changes, or working the boundaries of circuit design. It can feel isolating, but the truth is, all of us are working through similar challenges. Together, we’re figuring out different pieces of the puzzle.

That’s why we’re hosting MinaCon in Istanbul—a three-day unconference where we come together to illuminate the ways forward.  I’m Voboda, and I’ll be facilitating. I’m a Mina hacker and I’ve run a bunch of unconferences before.

Real Projects, Real People

One thing I like about the Mina community is its highly-responsive. Questions don’t go unanswered, and when we don’t have all the answers, we work through problems together. That’s how we’ve broken through some barriers that still hold others back in the ZK landscape.

Take Tileville, a game built on zkNoid, where every move is provable but remains private. They struggled with massive circuits validating complex combinations of tile traits during every turn. The zkNoid team offered help, and they worked together to split them into recursive proofs. Tileville launched their alpha to 100 users—no small feat for an indie game—and are now developing new mechanics and features only possible with recursion. They’re also doing something only Mina’s ZK games can – proofs generated at the start and end of a game, not one per move. It’s a UX shift that they’re sharing with others.

Then there’s Karol, who spent weeks wrestling with race conditions. At one of our hacker houses, he sat down with Nathan from o1Labs. In one session, they cracked the problem with Action/Reducers. Now Karol’s project, Sliced, a group-buying zkApp, is in private beta, and he’s helping others with security audits. Nathan walked away with key insights from Karol and other developers—insights that shaped his roadmap.

These stories are everywhere in the Mina ecosystem. We’re a community of builders who push through, share what we know, and keep winning. We’ve been taking home prizes at ETHGlobal events because we’ve built this ethos—knowing we’ve got each other’s backs.

I’m not the best developer, but surprised myself, taking home a first prize at the last ETHBerlin, with zKal. I had access to the right decision-makers, which meant I could focus on solving the right problems. And when I got stuck, I had the authors of the libraries on hand.

Unconferences like MinaCon create relationships so that support is always within reach—not just during an event, but every day.

The Power of Unconferences

The term ‘unconference’ is popping up all over web3, but most miss the mark. The key is no central control over the agenda.

An unconference is a structured space, but where you decide what to tackle, and we all facilitate the right connections and conversations. That’s how the relationships click.

At MinaCon, there will be no talks, no panels and no slides. Just demos, small group discussions, and hands-on sessions – each moving a project forward. There are session formats to choose from: some go deep into code, some are animated like game shows, but they’re all for you to plug in your projects and your goals. The days are structured around those formats, but the session topics and schedule is filled by the people in the room, on the day.

Important conversations are already taking shape.

ZK Prove All The Things: Mobile, Web & Ethereum

Several teams are tackling proofs on mobile, one of the toughest challenges in ZK today. Mobile devices weren’t designed for the computational demands of ZK. Developers working on zkCloudWorker are offloading computations to the cloud. Others are digging into Android’s architecture, figuring out how to keep proofs private on-device by refactoring Kimchi’s proof system to work within the constraints of the OS.

Another team, Viable Systems, has taken web nodes into production tests, having already generated a production Mina block from a web browser. Different cryptographers have enabled Mina’s recursive proofs to verify Ethereum signatures, web2 API calls, and the ChaCha20 encryption protocols used in VPNs, SSH, and encrypted storage systems. With Mina, we can now prove access to servers and encrypted storage and eth wallets and arbitrary web services, opening cross-system capabilities. This is technically exciting but startups and product developers need to mould these capabilities with real-world use cases.

These are multidisciplinary engineering challenges that break through when we all come together.

Defi

DeFi teams have already developed early versions of new primitives only possible with recursive ZK:

• Eliminating signaling problems in open pools and order books, ensuring that trading positions remain private and secure.
• Moving beyond swaps, creating new methods for attracting liquidity that don’t rely on traditional pools.
• Combining order books with automated market makers (AMMs) to bring the liquidity and speed of order books together with the trustlessness of AMMs.
• Designing perpetuals based on multi-variable proofs, which allow users to engage in complex financial positions while preserving privacy.

Together, these compose into new DeFi positions for institutions and degens alike.

These aren’t minor tweaks—they’re foundational shifts in how DeFi works. It’s like designing an electric motor in a combustion engine world. Collectively, these efforts will define how Mina positions itself in the DeFi space. This isn’t theory—it’s about taking these models to market and driving adoption.

Tradfi

Flipping over to TradFi, recursive ZK proofs offer relief for enterprises, particularly in compliance and regulation. Recursive proofs mean private data doesn’t need to be constantly reproven, reducing storage and re-requesting. Some developers are already in talks with global banks, exploring how ZK technology can meet institutional demands without compromising control or performance. Others are building automated account recovery products using ZK Proofs of national ID.

Selling enterprise software is a long game. Several Mina founders have built and sold enterprise software companies, and they’re sharing their strategies to help others navigate this slow but critical process. It’s not just fintech—these efforts make ZK accessible to every cautious industry.

zk-Native Tokens

One of our early successes is Mina NFT. It didn’t just launch on mainnet—it’s capturing real attention from NFT traders. They iterate quickly, learning where to integrate AI, solving security issues, and using ZK properties—like NFTs that change state based on private data without revealing it.

Most NFT projects struggle to gain traction, but Mina NFT has brought in new users and developers, even helping other zkApps cut through the noise. Mina NFT is becoming a vital entry point for projects needing attention and a first user base. By attracting NFT builders and traders, it’s a marketing engine for other zkApps. Mina NFT isn’t just growing—it’s helping others grow too.

Why This MinaCon is Invite-Only

This first MinaCon aims to support an inflection point—scaling up our smaller hacker-house sessions that have already worked so well. 

We all wanted it to be bigger and open, so it was a tough call to keep this event invite-only. Here’s why: we wanted to move fast before DevCon, and with the timeline, it was practical to focus on the core protocol and library engineers, alongside the most active zkApp developers already in communication with us. These 60 people are part of the pumping heart of our community, and starting with them helps anchor the peer-support culture for future gatherings.

We’re already a community of hundreds of active builders, and we’ll continue expanding. This MinaCon is laying the groundwork.

Showing Up

In a way, the unconference has already started. Builders are reaching out, offering support and sharing breakthroughs. That’s the spirit of it. We’re creating a post-ZK world, project by project, helping each other as we go. MinaCon is just a physical space where these threads come together.

Yours, Truly, Voboda.

Thanks to Mario, Karol, Satyam, John, Will, Becky and Drea for feedback.