Mina — End Game or New Era ? #1
1. Governance Shift to o1Labs
M ina Protocol returned its technical development leadership to O(1) Labs which functioned as the original core developer team.
The Mina Foundation transferred all technical roadmap and protocol engineering responsibilities to O(1) Labs following community feedback and internal evaluations.
1.1. Roles Post Transition:
The new governance structure defines how responsibilities between these two entities should operate.
- O(1)Labs now controls all aspects of protocol development and engineering and product delivery for Mina. The organization maintains control of the technical roadmap and zkApp platform improvements through their world class ZK Engineering team. The core technology of Mina returns to its original development team for unified technical direction and accelerated development.
- Mina Foundation now directs its efforts toward developing the ecosystem and establishing decentralized governance systems and managing the treasury. The Foundation has started work on establishing a decentralized on chain treasury system while supporting community governance projects. Foundation will promote Mina while building partnerships and maintain long-term sustainability by using community driven funding processes and decision making mechanisms.
1.2. Leadership Changes:
Josh Cincinnati (former Zcash Foundation director and Interchain Foundation board member) took on the dual role of Mina Foundation’s interim CEO and Board President.
Evan Shapiro (Mina Founder) and Kurt Hemecker (former CEO) both exited their positions at the Foundation.
The governance transition introduced a simplified system which combined O(1) Labs’ technological capabilities with a reorganized Foundation to achieve better decentralization and operational efficiency.
I wanted to briefly summarize and inform you about the internal planning and the forward management plan. Let’s move on to the interesting part for me, the technical planning, and take a detailed look at it.
2. Fall 2025 Hard Fork Plan
Mina ecosystem is preparing a significant protocol upgrade in Fall 2025.
O(1) Labs has outlined a set of finalized improvements targeting performance, developer experience, and network capacity.
2.1. Automated Node Upgrades:
New upgrade automation mechanism will ensure Mina nodes seamlessly switch to the new protocol version during hard forks. This fixes the manual, time sensitive process from the last Berkeley Upgrade, reducing coordination hassles.
The goal is to maintain security and consensus integrity while streamlining network wide upgrades (no more rushed manual updates :) ).
2.2. Reduced Block Production Time:
The block time will be lowered from the current 180 seconds to a shorter interval (testing has validated ~90 second slots). Shorter slots mean faster block production and improved finality and throughput across Mina.
O(1) Labs is evaluating how far they can safely reduce this parameter without causing instability or missed blocks.
Even a 2x decrease (to 90 second) will double transaction throughput and make zkApp interactions more responsive.
2.3. zkApp Account Update Improvements:
This upgrade removes previous constraints on zkApp transaction complexity.
In the Berkeley Update, each zkApp transaction was limited to a single SNARK Proof (one account update per transaction) for simplicity, capping how many state updates a transaction could do.
Fall 2025 fork will re-enable splitting a zkApp transaction across multiple proofs, effectively raising the limit on how many account updates or calls a single transaction can include.
At minimum, a 2× increase in account update capacity is expected (and potentially more, if testing allows). This lets developers create more sophisticated, multi step zkApp interactions in one go.
2.4. Higher Network Throughput:
Alongside faster blocks and lifted zkApp limits, Mina will increase available block space to pack more transactions per block. Network can handle much more activity without congestion. This is an initial step to scale throughput as demand grows.
2.5. Expanded Events & State Size:
Developers will get more capacity for app specific data.
The limit on zkApp events and actions (currently ~16 field elements per transaction) will be increased, enabling advanced use cases like including full Merkle Paths in events.
Moreover, each zkApp account’s state size will grow from 8 field elements to 32 field elements.i
It’s designed to facilitate more elegant Protokit app chain settlements on Mina (apps can store necessary state with fewer compromises).
2.6. Historical State Access
The current implementation of zkApps prevents them from making assertions about specific protocol states (such as randomness or timestamps) because of the timing uncertainty of blocks.
The upgrade introduces a new API which allows zkApps to retrieve information about previous block states. The new functionality enables use cases including onchain randomness beacons and proving recent Mina Merkle Ledger state inside zkApps.
The zkApps will gain reliable access to a small portion of historical data through proofs which were impossible before this upgrade.
2.7. Rust Node Integration
Mina will start releasing its new Rust Node client with high performance capabilities in phases.
The development team at O(1)Labs will integrate tested Rust components into the OCaml Node one by one while waiting for a complete and audited Rust implementation.
The strategy of staged releases allows users to benefit from performance and memory improvements straight away. Rust written subsystems for networking and cryptography will substitute OCaml based subsystems to produce a lighter and faster node system before the release of the complete Rust client.
The transition toward a completely Rust based Mina node starts with this development which enhances stability while improving developer productivity.
2.8. More
Automatic staking payout distribution stands as a current design under development. O(1)Labs is planning a design to make staking rewards automatic onchain for delegators, greatly improving the staking experience.
Block producers currently must manually share rewards with delegators offchain.
O(1)Labs will seek input from node operators and execute their proposal through the Mina Improvement Proposal (MIP) process. The Fall 2025 fork will receive automated staking payouts if the development team achieves consensus before the update.
Governance features including onchain voting and treasury were purposefully excluded from this upgrade by the team. Governance decentralization remains an objective yet they choose to dedicate more time to system design (the Foundation works independently on a community treasury).
The Fall 2025 hard fork maintains its concentration on developer oriented performance upgrades while delivering the promised features.
3. Mina’s ZK Proof Layer Architecture
Mina was designed not just as a standart blockchain, but as a “Succinct Settlement Layer” capable of verifying entire other blockchains with a single proof.
This is a forward- ooking advantage: as demand rises for trustless interoperability, protocols like Ethereum are seeking ways to achieve single proof validation.
Mina already achieves this. Its core design produces a single succinct proof of its own state and that same mechanism can be extended to verify foreign proofs.
The result is that Mina can act as a “secure root of trust”. Any proof generated off chain (whether from a zkApp, another L1 chain, or an off chain data source) can be submitted to Mina and checked by all validators cheaply.
This makes Mina a powerful “composable proof hub”. Every piece of data ever proven on Mina is succinctly recorded in the global state proof and thus “accessible and verifiable by anyone, anywhere… ready to be reused and built upon”.
4. Project Untitled and Shared State Management
ZkApps enable verifiable computations off chain yet managing shared state between multiple users or transactions remains a challenge.
Developers face challenging decisions when numerous users need to access the same piece of state because storing large amounts of data on chain is expensive and limited in size or using offchain databases and servers brings back centralization issues and sync complexities.
The costs of storing data on chain remain high while each zkApp account has strict state size limitations at 8 field elements until the upcoming upgrade. Multiple parties attempting to update the same state produces coordination problems and race conditions.
Two users who attempt to increment a shared counter will experience conflicts when implementing the operation without proper synchronization.
Web3 requires an efficient solution to manage mutable shared state which maintains decentralization and performance but no such solution exists at present.
Project Untitled functions as O(1) Labs’ solution to handle state management problems.
The decentralized state storage and update system called “Project Untitled” emerged in late 2024 to support zkApps and other applications. The system employs polynomial commitments together with SNARKs to enable mutable application state management off chain at a scalable and censorship resistant level.
Project Untitled enables developers to handle big or dynamically changing state (e.g., databases, game worlds, order books) off-chain while proving state updates validity to Mina (or any chain).
The implementation of polynomial commitment schemes enables users to update the state using compact proofs which replace full state rewriting.
State updates become highly cost efficient and reduce latency because multiple users can modify different parts of the state simultaneously while each update requires only a brief proof of change.
The state update approach enables application state to operate like memory instead of storage thus providing fast and inexpensive read and write operations just like traditional computing applications do with memory.
Project Untitled delivers the following essential capabilities:
-> Real-time shared data access enables both applications and users to maintain an always-current perspective.
-> The system uses censorship resistant transaction sequencing which prevents any single entity from controlling state update reordering or blocking updates.
-> Seamless integration with existing chains via proofs.
Unlike some off chain state solutions (like centralized servers or optimistic rollups with long challenge periods), Project Untitled is being built to avoid trust tradeoffs and long delays. Every state update will be backed by a cryptographic proof (zkSNARKs) and can be verified on chain almost immediately, giving strong consistency guarantees without needing a central operator.
The development of Project Untitled occurs without trust tradeoffs and long delays because it does not depend on centralized servers or optimistic rollups with extended challenge periods. State updates supported by zkSNARKs cryptographic proofs enable quick onchain verification which provides strong consistency assurances without requiring central operators.
Project Untitled functions independently of blockchain networks because it can operate across different ecosystems including Ethereum and other platforms.
Mina will receive first class treatment throughout this system. O(1)Labs identified this solution requirement through their observation of Mina zkApp developers facing shared state challenges. Mina based applications will have easy access to this offchain state manager through Project Untitled interoperability starting from day one.
The base protocol of Mina receives support from this implementation. The lightweight chain of Mina serves for consensus and verification but Untitled handles state management that Mina keeps away from its first level operations.
According to O(1)Labs, Mina needs supplementary state management systems which prevent race conditions in multi user environments and Project Untitled functions as this precise solution.
The two will work in tandem, Mina verifying the proofs that Untitled produces for state updates to create an “ideal system for shared mutable state in decentralized applications”.
4.1. Integration & Use Cases
A zkApp would implement Project Untitled as its state handling solution during proof settlement using Mina as its settlement platform.
A decentralized exchange order book or an on chain game world with many players serves as an example. Users would modify the entire system state (order book and game state) through polynomial commitments when they perform actions such as placing orders or moving characters. The system would create a ZK Proof demonstrating valid state transition which Mina would authenticate before recording the proof. Users can trust the state update immediately after verification because the proof demonstrates rule consistency.
The process operates swiftly while keeping Mina blocks from becoming congested because only the compact proof needs to be transmitted. Social networks alongside IoT networks and collaborative platforms that were previously impractical for blockchain implementation can now become feasible. Multi user zkApps will no longer face restrictions from Mina’s account state or risk conflicting updates.
Project Untitled operates as the shared data platform which supports large scale “zero knowledge collaborative applications”.
O(1) Labs operates an open development process to construct this system while encouraging developers from all ecosystems to join their efforts. Project Untitled has the potential to expand Mina’s reach beyond its L1 position by establishing itself as a central platform for proof verification and shared state management.
Thanks for reading..
X : blockofchain