On Thursday, December 16th at 11:00 UTC, we welcomed our community for a festive community call ahead of the holiday season. Thanks to everyone who joined us and asked us questions during and in advance.
Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, we do not have a recording of the entire session. It was our first community call, and we’ll ensure that we always have several recordings in the future to prevent them from not being available.
However, we do have a recording of one of the key takeaways: Our Community team member Barry (better known as Eurobuddha) explaining how Minima will always fit on a mobile phone. You can listen to it here:
The rest of this post will cover some of our highlights from this session. Our Social Media Manager Naomi moderated the call, and Jazmin, Technical communications, and Barry, Community Engagement, spoke on stage.
Minima Hard Fork
Naomi: One of the most recent updates on Minima was our Hard Fork. Could you share what changes it has introduced?
Jazmin: In general, a Hard Fork is an update to a blockchain that can include vulnerability patches or the introduction of new features. Unlike soft forks, Hard Forks are not backward compatible, so blocks created using the rules pre-fork will be rejected. That’s why nodes must update to the new Minima.
With the Minima Hard Fork, we’ve added peer-to-peer to Minima nodes, which means that nodes can now connect and communicate directly. This will be the foundation for our second layer: Maxima. Maxima will further enhance security and drive scalability in the future.
Barry: And to add to that, when updating your node, don’t forget to connect your Node ID with your IncentiveCash app.
MiniDapps & MiniHub
Naomi: We’ve received a lot of questions around the MiniDapps, and the MiniHub what happens to that at this stage?
Jazmin: With the Hard Fork, we’ve taken this as an opportunity to revamp and work on the MiniDapps ecosystem — taking into account all the community feedback we’ve received. We will release new versions of the Hub and MiniDapps in Q1 2022.
Barry: The MiniDapps will be genuinely decentralized apps and what’s exciting is that they will run on your phone, locally hosted, in your browser. That means that no one can take them away from you. And one more thing worth highlighting is that it doesn’t require learning a new language for developers. They can create MiniDapps using JavaScript, HTML/CSS, which all form the basis of every Web-developers stack. You can even create a mobile app, for example, for Android, and easily make it work with Minima. That’s the beauty of it.
2021 Highlights
Naomi: As the year is coming to an end, let’s take a moment to reflect. What would you say have been your Minima highlights this year?
Barry: That’s a tough one. There are many. But one thing personally for me is having learned Linux at the age of 52, in order to serve the community better. And it’s paying off. We were probably in contact if you ever submitted a ticket because you had trouble with your node.
And then, I’d also say that we now have a great team together. Everyone with their personal views and ideas works, and we all work together to improve Minima and serve the community.
Jazmin: I totally agree. This year, my personal highlight has been joining Minima full-time, having been a community member for roughly a year. We have a very cohesive team, and it’s a very exciting time as we continue growing the network. We recently hit more than half the node count of Bitcoin — and we see that continue.
Barry: One more is also the strong community we have. And everyone is involved, running a node and helping us make the network more and more secure. And we see the interest in all the great questions we receive on a near-daily basis. Thank you!
Community Member of the Month
Naomi: We’re humbled and excited to have such a strong community, and one of our members really has been shining, so we welcome on stage Josua.
Jazmin: Who is our Community Member of the month for all the support he’s been providing on our channels.
Naomi: Welcome, Josua. Awesome to have you with us. Could you tell us a bit more about yourself and how you found Minima?
Josua: Yes, sure, it’s great to be here. I am Josua, from Catalonia, and my background is in computing. I’ve done front-end and some back-end as well. It wasn’t so straightforward how I learned about Minima. I was thinking about creating a censorship-resistant platform, and I had this idea that the only way to make it happen is when everyone can have it on their phone. But I didn’t have the technical skills to do it. So I started looking and researching. And then I found Minima. And I was amazed that someone built it, and it was working!
Naomi: What a way to find out about us. We’re grateful to have you with us. Can you share if you’ve previously been involved in the crypto space?
Josua: I learned about Bitcoin in the early days, when you could still mine it using your CPU. But back then, you couldn’t do much with it, so I did not get much involved. And then, at the beginning of this year, I started day-trading cryptocurrencies and hope to be so successful eventually that I can make a living this way, which would give me time to focus more on my projects and the ideas I have.
Naomi: And you are currently building a game on Minima. Could you tell us more about that?
Josua: Indeed. That’s true. I am working on building a game on Minima using Godot. Godot is a gaming engine that provides developers with tools to make games more easily. It’s all open-source. I learned that you could use RPC commands to interact with the chain, and I am now learning more about scripting_. There is still a lot for me to learn, but the first version is a work in progress. I imagine that one day it would be great to have a faucet where people could play something together for a chance to earn Minima or entire quests._
If you want to learn more from Josua about his game, you can find him on our Discord Server.
Hashrate
Naomi: Hashrate of Bitcoin has reached an All-Time-High, and it’s an interesting topic we also did a Poll on. Do you think it’s the best way to measure security?
Jazmin: Hashrate describes how many Hashes per second a network processes, so the network’s computing power. In Bitcoin’s case, that’s an aggregate of the miners’ power. But I think while the rate is one aspect to look at, what matters more is how it’s distributed. You could have a very high hashrate, but when very few entities just hold it up, it’s questionable how secure that is.
Barry: Miners also secure the network with the power they provide. And it’s competitive on Bitcoin which leads to a problem that those with the resources will accumulate power — because that gives them the advantage to earn more. So now we have just a handful of entities that meaningfully secure the network.
Decentralization
Naomi: There are, of course, a lot of companies out there saying they are decentralized, and for someone new to the space, it might be hard to know how to do their research on it. Any things to watch out for?
Jazmin: For Proof-of-Work blockchains like Bitcoin, as mentioned before, it’s worth looking into the Hashrate Distribution. How many miners do actually earn block rewards? And other things to look for are generally the consensus algorithm. Proof-of-Stake is not decentralized.
Barry: I can’t really explain myself the rise of Proof-of-Stake and how people are not questioning it more. It’s clearly not a decentralized system.
Naomi: I think one of the factors might well be that it’s easy to create one, and it offers economic incentives for those putting up their stake. You can earn in these kinds of networks easily — maybe then some people are okay with it not being decentralized.
Jazmin: In Proof-of-Stake networks — albeit not decentralized by design — it’s a good idea to look into who holds the stake. And even for the entire supply, there are tools to check how much supply is in what wallets. And there are also exchanges.
Naomi: Having worked at an exchange, if a significant share of a token’s liquid supply is sitting on centralized exchanges’ orderbooks, you cannot claim that you are decentralized. If one exchange goes down significantly hinders your ability to operate. And it happens with many exchanges, voluntarily and not.
Jazmin: On that topic, at Minima, we see decentralization as binary — not a spectrum. You either are or aren’t.
Barry: And we will be the first to make true decentralization happen — using blockchain how it was meant to be.
Thanks to everyone who joined our community call and shared questions. We’re looking forward to welcoming you again next year. In the meantime, you can find us on Discord, Telegram, and Twitter.
We’re always happy to chat!