zkIgnite is a cohort-based, community-governed innovation program for experienced zero knowledge (ZK) builders and entrepreneurs in the Mina ecosystem. The program provides essential resources, including grants and community support, to help transform developers’ ideas and passion projects into commercial businesses.
Electors and technical reviewers assessed 106 grant proposals for Cohort 3 and have allocated funding to 29 projects building zkApps, developer tools, and infrastructure to support the fast-growing Mina ecosystem.
Elector Process
Mina is proudly powered by participants, and zkIgnite is no exception. Funding decisions are made by electors—a select group of experienced builders, users, and community members. This approach aligns with Mina Foundation’s commitment to decentralization, ensuring community priorities are at the forefront of ecosystem growth.
Cohort 3 also introduced a new technical committee of experts with in-depth knowledge of Mina’s core protocol, o1js, and zkApps. The technical committee advised electors on the feasibility of project proposals and will review Cohort 3 builders’ progress towards their milestones.
Electors used the following rubrics as a guiding framework to evaluate proposals and ultimately cast their votes.
| zkApp Product Track | |
| Commercial Potential | Does the zkApp have the potential to generate revenue?
How strong is the use case for a sustainable business over time? |
| Go-to-Market Strategy | Does the zkApp have the potential to bring on thousands of real users in the next 3-6 months?
Has the proposer articulated how they plan to get new users onboard with an MVP? |
| Vision & Growth Potential | How compelling is the vision for where this application will exist at scale? |
| Feasibility | Will the proposed design support the application’s desired scalability?
Did the proposer identify key risks or dependencies and articulate how to work around them? |
| Team | Based on the information provided, does the proposing team have relevant experience that will help them deliver on their milestones? |
| Developer Tooling & Infrastructure Track | |
| Impact: | Does the proposal solve a real problem or address a gap for developers building on Mina Protocol?
How important is the problem to be solved for developers to build quality zkApps? |
| Scalability & Growth Potential | Does the proposed solution have the potential to scale and accommodate the growing demand for zkApps in the future?
Does the proposal promote reusability and provide benefits to multiple parties within the Mina ecosystem? |
| Architecture | Does the proposed architecture design demonstrate that the proposers have a good understanding of Mina Protocol and o1js?
Will the proposed architecture support the application’s desired impact and scalability? |
| Feasibility | Are the proposed milestones feasible to achieve within the current o1js functionality?
Did the proposer identify key risks and articulate how to work around them? |
| Team | Based on the information provided, does the proposing team have relevant experience that will help them deliver on their milestones? |
Funded zkApp Projects
Electors have selected 18 zkApp proposals to receive, in total, more than 990,500 MINA in funding.
The projects cover a wide range of use cases, including but not limited to, DeFi, identity, and wallets. Here are the grantees:
Kaupang DEX (Phase 2) – XYK AMM and Orderbook (Road to the Dark Pools): 200,000 MINA
Kaupang is an application-specific layer two built with Protokit, a protocol development framework for privacy-enabled application chains, powered by the Mina blockchain. Phase 2 will provide a comprehensive set of trading features, such as XYK pools, private order book, and protocol governance.
Team: Matej Sima, Raphael Panic, Raunaque Patra
Trident – A Permissionless Liquidity Rollup with an Off-chain Orderbook: 126,980 MINA
Trident is an orderbook exchange complemented by a rollup on Mina for verification of correct execution of order matching. This allows a high throughput trading experience while validity of the order matching engine can still be verified, allowing an amalgamation of off-chain exchange with on-chain guarantees.
Team: Rahul Ghangas, Shreyas Londhe
Pass3 – Umbrella Solution to Identity Issue: 94,651 MINA
Pass3 is an umbrella solution to the existing concepts of identity, designed to be universal. By utilizing the concepts of OCR, NFC, and ML as core technologies, Pass3 will build an identity to an address, consisting of anything that might be deemed necessary within the platforms.
Team: Emre Akbas
Anomix Network (Phase 2) – A Hybrid zkRollup with Native ID: 85,000 MINA
A protocol-native ID system based on a new public ledger, which allows you to create/hold a unique account ID, asset management directly by ID, and also support multi-device synchronization, account recovery, etc.
Team: coldStar Luo, Comdex W, Daniel L
KimlikDAO Pass: zk-Identity Account That You Truly Own: 60,000 MINA
KimlikDAO Pass is a self-custody account with on-chain ZK sybil prevention and reusable KYC.
Team: Mert Sağlam, Buse Kaya, Emre Kaya, Meriç Kalkan, onur kilic
ATLASPAD – Fully Trustless Cross/Multi-Chain ZK Launchpad: 50,000 MINA
Atlaspad introduces a cross-chain ZK Launchpad that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to enable secure and private transactions across multiple blockchains.
Team: Baturalp Güvenç, Yunus Emre YOLDAŞ, Yiğid Balaban, Berk Çiçek, Çağlar Fırat, Osman Nuri Yıldız, SENA ATAY
Auxo (Phase 2) – Privacy-Preserving On-chain Funding Platform: 50,000 MINA
Auxo aims to bring funding workflows (investments, grants, accelerators, etc.) on-chain for better transparency and to lower the risks for both investors and builders. Utilizing ZKP and the privacy-preserving nature of the Mina blockchain, Auxo provides an innovative solution that allows investors to protect their privacy while actively engaging in the funding and decision-making processes.
Team: Nguyen Pham, Huy Minh, VN Pham, Le Quyen, Quinn Pham
Socialcap (Phase 2) – New Features and Improvements: 49,900 MINA
Socialcap empowers communities and their members to easily issue credentials through a mechanism of ‘social consensus’ achieved through various forms of voting. Improvements and new features will enable Socialcap to become a more robust and competitive product that showcases Mina’s strengths in privacy and proving in many real-world use cases.
Team: Mario Zito, Leandro Manzanal, Rahul Ghangas, Rafael Campos, Mikhail Korotkikh
Mina Domain Name Service: 45,000 MINA
In partnership with zkCloudWorker (see below), Mina Domain Name Service will allow users to mint domain names using zk-proofs, bringing a new layer of identity and recognition to accounts, tokens, zkApp addresses, and validators on the Mina blockchain.
Team: Staketab (Ducca Staketab, Vitali Horba, Dzmitry Sakalou, Yauhen Haurushou, Vitalik Karpuk)
TrustChain – Anti-Counterfeit Protocol Using ZK-SMART-NFC: 45,000 MINA
TrustChain is a developer protocol that aims to provide secure and efficient solutions for anti-counterfeiting, document security, and off-chain payments using blockchain technology. TrustChain’s flagship product and services, ZK Smart NFC, uses secure NFC technology combined with the Mina blockchain to provide an innovative and secure solution for a range of use cases.
Team: Nunu Nugraharja
‘Sliced’ Approach to Cooperative Group Purchases: 43,000 MINA
Sliced is a zero-interest financing service focused on the collective purchasing of goods. It’s an alternative to the existing solutions provided by big corporations and banks, offering transparency rather than hidden fees and rules that are targeted at less financially savvy individuals.
Team: Karol Podufalski, Wincenty Dulkowski, Alexander Blair, Andrzej Podufalski, Scott Phillips
Decentralized Identity Credentials & Trust Score Computation for Mina Ecosystem: 30,000 MINA
This product allows users to attach verifiable reputation credentials and aggregated scores to their wallet accounts, while leveraging Mina’s system to layer in flexible privacy-preservation and verification of integrity.
Team: Simon Molitor
Smart OTP’s and Biometrics Hash for ZK Keyless Wallet: 23,000 MINA
Continued development of ZK Keyless Wallet, the smart contract wallet that offers effortless security for your cryptocurrency. The wallet uses Social Recovery, SmartOTP’s, Biometric hash data, and Shamir Secret Sharing, allowing users to restore access without revealing any personal information using zero-knowledge proofs.
Team: IaM DEV
DRMina – Digital Content Marketplace With DRM Protection: 22,500 MINA
This proposal implements a gaming marketplace built on Mina and the use of modular DRM protection systems. Such initiatives aim to benefit both creators and users in the digital content ecosystem by reducing costs and increasing transparency.
Team: Kadircan Bozkurt
Galxe Protocol: 20,000 MINA
Galxe Protocol is a self-sovereign identity protocol where users can locally (in browsers) generate zero-knowledge proofs based on the credentials they hold. This proposal introduces o1js support to Galxe Protocol as an enhanced zk verification stack choice for users, improving the protocol’s security and efficiency.
Team: Zach Meltzer
MAC!: 19,000 MINA
MAC!, short for “Mina Arbitrated Contracts!” is a zkApp that allows one to create and deploy a new zkApp representing an escrow smart contract interaction. It requires no coding skills. The entire process is done visually using a webform-like editor.
Team: Marek Narożniak
Minager League – Fantasy Football Genre Gamified Staking Project: 16,500 MINA
Minager League is a multiplayer, browser-based sports manager game that employs gamification to promote staking. The objective is to get rid of passive involvement in staking and empower users to utilize their idle money within the bet pool.
Team: Aytunç Sancar
ENS Resolver on Mina – Free ENS Subdomains on Mina: 10,000 MINA
ENS Resolver on Mina offers free ENS subdomains without paying high gas fees on Ethereum L1. Subdomains minted on Mina will work the same as domains minted on Ethereum L1. By offering free ENS names, this project aims to promote Mina to the Ethereum community.
Team: Boray Saygilier
Funded Developer Tooling & Infrastructure Projects
Electors also selected 11 developer tooling and infrastructure proposals to receive, in total, 288,900 MINA in funding.
These projects aim to make it easier to build on Mina Protocol, enhancing efficiency and improving the developer experience on Mina Protocol (think “start-ups for start-ups”). Here are the grantees:
Pallad – S-Tier Mina Wallet: 50,000 MINA
Pallad is a TypeScript-based, non-custodial, high-performance wallet made up of a set of reusable parts and libraries that other developers in the ecosystem can share.
Team: Tomasz Marciniak
zkCloudWorker – Fast Cloud-Proving Service for zkApps: 39,400 MINA
zkCloudWorker provides ultra-fast proving in the cloud, along with robust isolation, composability, and an excellent user experience (UX) in order to significantly streamline and expedite the development of Mina zkApps on web and mobile devices.
Team: Mikhail Korotkikh, Mario Zito
zkEmail in o1js: 38,000 MINA
zkEmail is an existing open source project that provides tools to create verifiable proofs of emails in Circom and Halo2 with EVM verifier contracts. The purpose of this project is to rewrite the proof generation and verifier contracts using o1js and Kimchi to allow more native proving and verifying of emails in the Mina ecosystem.
Team: Mohammed oa, Mahmoud Kaffel
Plonk Verifier within o1js to Integrate Existing Data Availability Solutions: 30,000 MINA
This project will implement Plonk Verifier within o1js, so that projects in the Mina Ecosystem will be able to verify Avail’s VectorX and Celestia’s BlobstreamX proofs as a data availability solution.
ChainIDE: 26,500 MINA
ChainIDE for Mina aims to be the all-in-one cloud-based zkApp development platform with Lightnet support and an AI code assistant.
Team: Rahul Vyas
Clorio Wallet: 25,000 MINA
This proposal aims to bring zkApp capabilities to both Clorio Desktop and Clorio Mobile, further strengthening the team’s commitment to deliver an unparalleled wallet experience to users.
Team: Carbonara WeStake.Club, cryptosaka WeStake.Club
zkok.io – zkApp and Ecosystem Hub Additional Features for Continued Growth: 20,000 MINA
Continued updates and development of the zkok.io zkApp and Ecosystem hub and to add additional features in order to increase the visibility of Mina Protocol from both a community and developer perspective.
Team: Peter Graham, 0xJays _eth
Ozkar – building foundation for a dynamic healthcare ecosystem on Mina – Part 1: FHIR interoperability: 20,000 MINA
Ozkar is developing tools, infrastructure, and content to enable a rich and solid healthcare ecosystem on Mina. Ozkar’s focus is on integration as zero knowledge proof technology offers unique opportunities to connect blockchain to healthcare IT systems while bringing new guarantees for privacy. The first focus of Ozkar is to enable easy development of proving systems with the FHIR standard, the leading healthcare standard for modern IT development.
Team: Robin Sarfati
MRLN – Rate Limiting Nullifier on Mina: 16,000 MINA
MRLN offers rate limiting and spam prevention in zkApps.
Team: Deniz Bas
Automating Mina Rewards Distribution – A Go-Based Solution with Blockberry API Integration: 15,000 MINA
Introducing a Go-based script for Mina validators to automate reward distributions, fully compliant with Mina Foundation Delegation Program requirements. This solution simplifies the complex process of manually distributing rewards, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and adherence to guidelines.
Team: Ducca Staketab, Vitali Horba
Discord Umstad: 9,000 MINA
A Discord Bot which uses zkApp Umstad infrastructure. This project supports users in Mina Protocol Discord Channels with command prefix, slash commands, automatized answers and chat interface.
Team: Berkin Gurcan
What’s Next for Cohort 3
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who participated in this program. The caliber of project proposals reflects the incredible talent and innovation of the Mina developer community. Although not every proposal could receive funding this round, each submission demonstrated impressive and thoughtful work.
Now, funded project teams will utilize their initial grants to begin building out their ideas, working towards specific technical milestones outlined in their proposals. After three months, they will present their progress to the electors, who then vote to pay out the remaining grant only if the technical milestones were delivered.
ZK Devs, It’s Time to Build
With Mina’s Berkeley upgrade bringing enhanced ZK programmability to mainnet soon, there has never been a better time to get started.
If you are a developer who wants to build with zero knowledge on Mina, we encourage you to check out Docs and this comprehensive list of developer grant opportunities in the ecosystem.
Disclaimer: While empowering ZK developers and entrepreneurs in the Mina Ecosystem with essential resources, including grants and mentorship, Mina Foundation maintains a limited role within the zkIgnite Cohort 3 funded projects (“Projects”). Within zkIgnite as a community-governed innovation program, Mina Foundation’s involvement solely focuses on providing funding of community-elected Projects. While grants are subject to KYC verification by Mina Foundation, Mina Foundation’s involvement does not extend to the operational activities and management or decision-making of the individual Projects. Consequently, Mina Foundation assumes no liability or responsibility for the actions, decisions, or outcomes of the Projects. Mina Foundation shall not be implicated or held accountable for any legal actions or regulatory measures taken against the Projects or their owners. Mina Foundation’s role is strictly limited to the granting of MINA funds, which does not establish any direct or indirect control or influence over the Projects (including, without limitation, their content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided). By participating in this program, grantees acknowledge and accept that Mina Foundation bears no responsibility for the operation, success, or conduct of the Projects.
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.
