Mina Token Unlock Retrospective

Dear Mina Community,

Last week was an important milestone in the journey of Mina Protocol. Tokens for participants in Mina’s community sale were unlocked and we’re excited to enter the next phase in the future of the protocol.

Token Unlock and Exchange Listing Recap

On June 1st, 2021, several exchanges such as Kraken, OKEx, and Coinlist, started offering access to MINA. For the most current list of exchanges, please check the Mina website. Various crypto media outlets also shared their coverage of Mina’s latest developments. Upon listing, Mina Mainnet saw a more than 500% increase in network traffic, reaching more than 20K active Mina holders on chain. Despite seeing more accounts on chain than ever before, the Mina network remained stable with about 1,000 connected nodes. 

Unlock Day Challenges

We are aware of certain challenges faced by the Mina community during the token unlock last week, and we would like to share more details about what happened.

June 1, 2021

• At 12:00am UTC, tokens purchased in the community sale via CoinList were due to be unlocked, meaning they would be available for trading on CoinList Pro and also for withdrawals from users’ CoinList wallets. 
• Trading was initially delayed due to failures in the order book, during a pre-market period called indicative auction. Users also placed an extremely high volume of sell orders into CoinList Pro’s order books. The high volume of orders caused CoinList Pro’s system to become unstable. CoinList made the decision to close the market to ensure stability at trading open in the face of extreme market action. 
• By 10:46am UTC, CoinList had solved the volume-related technical issues and trading began. Withdrawals were unavailable as CoinList’s systems stabilized.
• By 11:30am UTC, CoinList enabled withdrawals. 

June 2, 2021

• At 1:52am UTC, due to higher than estimated withdrawal demand, transactions were not submitted properly onto the blockchain. Withdrawals were then paused until a fix could be implemented. 
• CoinList, o1Labs, and the custody provider worked diligently to resolve these issues until around 11pm UTC, when a fix was implemented. However, given the high volume as withdrawals were resumed, there was a significant delay in processing due to how the Mina node software was integrated by the designated custody provider.

June 3, 2021

• Around 1am UTC, CoinList paused deposits and withdrawals. This time the issue was caused by excessive withdrawal demand exceeding a rate limit on how many transactions a single node was allowed to submit to the Mina blockchain.

June 4, 2021

• Around 11pm UTC, withdrawals were turned back on after CoinList worked with the  custody provider to reconfigure the way it submits transactions to the Mina blockchain.

As of when this update is published, trading and withdrawal requests are being accepted and there is no longer a significant delay in processing on CoinList. The issues faced were mainly caused by the sudden load in trading or withdrawal of MINA tokens from the >41,000 users on CoinList. The latest updates on CoinList’s status can be checked here. Throughout this period, other exchanges with MINA token support were able to process deposits and withdrawals with minimal issues. 

Further Clarifications

As new people are joining the Mina community, we are seeing some questions that we’d like to address and clarify: 

Were the delays due to Mina having a low TPS limit? 

The MINA blockchain didn’t come close to hitting its TPS limit during the unlock period. As of right now and since its mainnet launch, the Mina blockchain is configured to process 0.5 to 1 TPS, and throughout this entire period the peak TPS was ~0.1TPS. Mina’s design allows us to continue increasing TPS with incremental improvements as network usage increases.

Due to the way Mina is designed, increasing TPS is a matter of engineering effort, not a foundational design problem. Our philosophy is that decentralization is the industry’s hardest and most fundamental problem – and Mina has been specifically designed to solve that problem first. We believe that TPS is what you build after, and Mina’s design allows us to continue increasing TPS with relatively easy incremental improvements as network usage increases.

I have questions about Mina’s token unlock schedule and how the tokens are distributed.

Full details of the token distribution and unlock schedule can be found here.

Community Growth & Contributions

Last week’s activities also spurred incredible growth in the Mina community. We surpassed 100K followers on Twitter and welcomed several new community-led groups made up of members who are eager to help Mina grow even more. 

We would like to highlight the contributions of some community members who were especially helpful during this critical time:

• Moody#5804 for creating a community-led Telegram group and inviting Genesis Founding Members to speak during live voice-chat sessions. 
• Openbitlab#9650 for keeping the community updated with the most current news on an unofficial community portal, Mina Magazine.
• Antropocosmist#5394 and Natalia#3467, among others, for creating a great step-by-step guide on how to delegate and stake MINA.

Mina also welcomed about 17K new MINA holders on the chain, showing more than a 500% increase. Many of these new accounts are new Mina participants who are using wallets that are built by the community to stake their tokens in staking pools and earn block rewards. We want to thank the members in the community who are powering the network by building wallets, block explorers, staking pools, staking dashboards, calculators, and all other kinds of tooling that enable new users to engage with Mina.

Now that Mina has opened this new chapter, we encourage you to continue being involved in Mina’s community and ecosystem, and invite you to join the Mina Community Spotlight virtual event on June 25 to learn more about what’s next for Mina. As always, thank you for your continued support. We are excited to embark on this journey with all of you.