On January 13th, we hosted our first AMA in 2022 featuring our CTO, Paddy Cerri, who shared more on the creation of Minima and our second layer: Maxima.
Thanks to everyone who participated and all the great questions we received. You can find a recording of the entire session here.
Below we’ve picked a few of the most critical points and put them in writing for those who didn’t have a chance to join. And anyone who simply prefers to read.
What got you on this journey to create Minima?
Paddy: “Let’s start with what was happening even before Bitcoin and what we were trying to achieve. We were trying to create a system resistant to censorship that no one could tamper with. And the only possible way to accomplish that was through decentralization. As soon as a system has a centralized component, it becomes an attack vector for censorship.
A system is only as decentralized as its most centralized part.
And then, Satoshi came along and used Proof-of-Work, which Adam Back had used in his HashCash to prevent spam in combination with the blockchain to create Bitcoin. This was brilliant because it allowed us all to come to a consensus in a decentralized system. That was mind-blowing.
I fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole in 2012, started running the software, and all was great for a while. And then, a little bit later, centralization began to creep in. It’s a powerful force that just keeps on going. The cracks started showing during the block wars, and I stopped being an equal participant on the network.
I realized that we couldn’t have this competition at the base layer for monetary rewards because that fosters centralization. And that’s how Minima was born.“
What do you think people will think or say in ten years about Minima?
Paddy: “I think what’ll happen is that the larger chains will get more decentralized, and blockchains will grow, so it’ll be nearly impossible for individuals to run nodes. And it’s not sufficient to just validate transactions.
Excluding a transaction from a block doesn’t break the consensus rules and is yet a form of censorship.
Minima is collaborative; we have 13,000 node runners running it together, and the larger Minima gets, the more decentralized it becomes. I think we’ll have more nodes running than all the other chains.
So in 10 years, I think Minima will use a noticeable percentage of the world’s power to protect the chain. If we get on every phone, that’s a start. In 10 years, I hope that we have a Minima chip installed on every electronic device.
And there might be people using Minima without even realizing it. Minima will just be seamlessly running in the background. “
What happens to my funds and my node when someone gains access to my device?
Paddy: “Personal responsibility, that is the point about freedom. It is entirely up to individuals how much they want to be in charge if you entrust your private key, which gives you access to your coins, to a third party; or keep custody of it yourself. That is a scale everyone has to pick for themselves. That means protecting your device, and your private key is in your hands.
Everything that applies to other chains in that regard applies to Minima as well.”
Wouldn’t it be useful if people could connect with other peers on the network using something like a unique identifier?
Paddy: “Without getting everyone too excited, we are currently testing something called MaxChat, our version of Whatsapp internally. It runs exactly like that over peer-to-peer connections. That is what Maxima does. Our intention for Maxima is to provide an information transport layer. Currently, everything on the internet is free, because we’re the product. Advertisers get to show us all these ads for things we don’t want.
If you want a censorship-resistant information transfer layer, you’ll have to pay for it. But frankly, that’ll be a very small amount. “
Minima doesn’t use IPFS. Why is that?
Paddy: “I love IPFS as a concept, having a global store data, but I’m not sure if it’s incentive compatible. When I think of game theory, the idea of people doing it altruistically rubs me the wrong way. We were going to use it at some point, but ultimately the ones who run it decide what will be stored, and I think it’ll need a value transfer layer to really take off. “
Apart from general freedom, what are you most excited about for Minima or the Minima community after the mainnet launch?
Paddy: “You know in our current systems today I am not allowed to send money to send to these people or do that, I think eventually we will get to a point where governments will have to entice people to live in their country once we have a system where value and information flow freely.
I think the world we’re going to be looking at is going to be very different from what we’re used to. I think we can’t imagine that now.
I’m very excited to see the world we’re trying to enable unfold. “
What was the most challenging part of building Minima so far and what do you worry about?
Paddy: “The biggest challenge was getting Minima to run on a phone and we’ve done that. My biggest worry is that the speed of growth of the network and the transactions per second that are fired across it is measured against the speed of the optimization of the protocol.
Minima is an incredibly parallel system, transactions run in parallel, all the transactions in a block occur simultaneously. Having a process run in parallel isn’t simple. The question then is will we be able to make the protocol fast enough to run on a phone to keep up with the network’s growth. That’s what I’m working on at the moment. “
What are you most excited about in the next few months?
Paddy: “Launching Maxima and seeing what people think of our information transfer layer. This is something we haven’t shown to the community yet, but it’s a big part of our whitepaper as well. I think running value and information transfer together is going to be hopefully groundbreaking. And I am very much looking forward to the community feedback. “
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You can find the recording of our AMA here.