Mina Mainnet Launch Process

Mina’s mainnet release candidate is planned to launch in two weeks! After two years of rigorous testing and strengthening the protocol with the Mina community, we are excited to take the next steps and head to mainnet!

Mainnet Release Candidate: March 16, 2021

Mina’s mainnet release candidate (RC) is planned to launch on March 16, 2021. If all goes well, the RC will graduate and become Mina’s mainnet. We need all block producers, snark workers, and node operators to be ready on this date to launch the network. If the RC successfully graduates into the mainnet, all block rewards, SNARK fees, account balances, transactions etc. that happened on the RC will be part of the mainnet.

Graduation Criteria

After launching the RC, we will monitor it for several days. These are the criteria for the RC to be certified as the actual mainnet:

• The network must be stable.
• No critical alerts occur, that are necessary to deploy a fix for.
• The chain quality must be sufficient. If the chain quality is insufficient due to low participation, then the RC will not graduate into the mainnet. It is crucial for everyone to treat the RC as the actual mainnet and participate.

If the RC does not graduate, we will share the instructions at that time on what to do next.

There is, however, a high probability that the RC will become the actual mainnet, and we will prepare for this scenario starting from March 16:

• We will use our alert and monitoring system.
• We will start measuring the performance of node operators.

Graduation to Mainnet

If all criteria are met, then the RC that was launched on March 16 will be certified as Mina’s mainnet. All block rewards, SNARK fees, account balances, and transactions that were part of the RC will actually count towards the mainnet, as the RC itself becomes Mina’s mainnet. When the time comes, we’ll organise a big celebration with the community.

What do Block Producers need to do?

• Some of you, for example the seed peers and other node operators, will be requested to join the network on March 15, 2021 – one day before the official launch of the RC – and help with preparing the network. You will need to connect to the network before the official launch without producing blocks. We will provide more detailed instructions on this.
• If you belong to the above group, you will be contacted by email or on Discord. Please keep an eye on your mailbox and the Discord channels under “mainnet”.
• Starting from March 16, 4pm PST, all block producers will be able to download the binary, start up the daemon, and start staking.
• We recommend you to complete the above step and start staking within 48 hours.
• If you’re receiving a delegation from the Mina Foundation and o1Labs, or would like to be considered for it in the future, then you will need to complete a few steps in order to (continue to) express your interest to participate in the delegation program. We’ll share more detailed information on this soon.
• There is a high probability that the RC will become the actual mainnet, so all block rewards and other fees that you earn on the RC may become part of the mainnet.
• Share your experience with us and the community on social media! (E.g. Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

We’ve come a long way since the start of the project, and we’re very happy with where we stand on Mina’s technology, the ecosystem of block producers, and the community. We’re excited to head towards this big milestone, and launch Mina’s mainnet!