There's a famous line in a movie that goes something like, "Yo tengo un gato en mis pantolones," meaning, "I have a cat in my pants." To one-up that person, I have a blockchain in my pants. Well, sort of.
I know that blockchain tribalism runs deep, and I know this is Hive, but it's still okay to talk other blockchains.
A week and a half ago I figured I'd fool around and find out (faafo) about the Minima blockchain. I'd heard of Minima on a podcast and seen Minima on various websites to the point where I wondered, "What is it?"
Notably, Minima must have some money backing it from somewhere. This, frankly, makes me a little skeptical. (I prefer chains that spawn from someone's basement, fueled by coffee and Mountain Dew.) I first heard of Minima on Laura Shin's Unchained podcast. I've seen a sponsored interview on the front page of CoinDesk for several days. I've seen Minima ads on the Brave browser. For a chain that hasn't yet gone to mainnet, they've got support from somewhere.
I suppose the ad campaign worked, at least enough for me in that it suckered me in to try. Like the carnival barker hollering enough times so that I eventually walk into the tent, I gave Minima a look-see.
The main concept of Minima isn't new...make a blockchain so slender and lean that a node can be run on nearly anything, including a phone. That way, decentralizing can really power the chain. I like the premise. Could such a thing work?
Without question, I don't wish to run a blockchain node on my phone 24/7/365 as a constant battery-and-resource-suck. Instead, I set up a VPS Linux node according to the Minima directions. It was actually, surprisingly, rather easy. And, more surprisingly, actually seemed to work. So many times, directions seem easy, but don't work.
How things looked
On the VPS, everything looked fine in the CLI (command line interface). Then, per the instructions, I went to my browser and looked at the "MiniDapp" on my server. All of the images and info below were served and shown from my node, from my VPS server and into my web browser.
The "MiniDapps" on Minima:
Let's take a look a few of these dapps.
The "NFT" button really got my attention. Does Minima handle NFTs on a blockchain that can run on a phone? I clicked "Create Token" and saw this:
The info and metadata requested does seem rather standard for NFTs.
The "NFTs" button seems to be only for viewing collected NFTs. Since I have zero, mine is blank.
This is the CLI client view showing the "status" of my node:
The Android app
I did hit a snag at one point for some reason. I could not access the MiniDapps on my server. Not sure what went on, likely a PEBCAK error. After re-installing things, I got it back to working. In the meanwhile, I did use the Android app to get things going.
Talk about easy, it was nothing more than downloading the app from the Play store and installing it. That was running a node. The MiniDapp screen appeared in the same way as with my VPS node, as did all of the MiniDapps.
After getting the VPS running, I've since uninstalled the phone app. I just worry about battery and resource usage there. Still, I will say it was very easy and worked.
What am I doing exactly?
My question now is, "Am I running a 'full node' complete with all of the on-chain data?" That seems a bit of a stretch. How can a node-on-a-phone contain all of the chain's data? I know that the Mina protocol (similar name, different chain) has a unique avenue. They compress the entire blockchain down to a single hash...just a handful of characters. They say it's only 22kb in fact. That's a very intriguing chain to me. I've fooled around with it, but I have much more to understand there.
How about a Hive connection? What's lacking in my view with Minima, is what Hive hold's as a main benefit...Hive's social media component. Aside from its chat app MaxSolo (which no doubt is only used by Minima hard-cores), Minima does not have any type of social media. The social component seems to me to be a key to proliferation, or not.
As I read a bit more about Minima, two points stand out to me as good things:
- Minima can run smart contracts
- Minima supports NFTs natively
For a UTxO chain (like Bitcoin or LTC or Doge), these seem unusual to me.
On the not-so-good side, two things:
- Minima recently announced there will be some type of KYC. Evidently they'd initially said there will be none. Being a decentralization-is-top-priority chain, this is a bit counter. But, regulations. It was also announced that the KYC would require no personal info...not sure how that works. Instead, the KYC would only require proof-of-being-human, so, we'll see.
- It was also announced that a pre-sale would be coming up. Hmm. I don't like the sound of that at all. Talk about a huge red flag. From what I understand, Minima is not earned via PoW like Bitcoin...you don't earn coins by mining. I'm not exactly sure how emission takes place...I guess it's by buying. Hmm. I'm a fan of no pre-mine, and earning by doing something. Like BTC's proof-of-work. Like Hive's proof-of-brain (which is proof-of-work-of-your-brain in my view). It's also like HBIT where every single HBIT is proof-of-activity on the Hive blockchain. A little @Hivebits plug there! :)
Wrap up
Regarding Minima, for now, I have a node running and can interact a bit with the chain. This is the kind of thing I use as a learning mechanism more than anything else. Try and learn. I'm intrigued by the ability to run smart contracts and NFTs on a chain that isn't huge and cumbersome. It will be interesting to see how things pan out.
Want to try it out?
Minima.global is the site with info. Feel free to use my referral link (I would get a tiny bonus reward, I think): https://incentive.minima.global/account/register?inviteCode=ZSCCIPCB
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