News
What's going on in the Minima ecosystem?
What you need to know
Listed from most recent to oldest
Streamr partnership : Another partnership announced: Streamr. No details of any product this time, and that will be the test, but Streamr's website suggests a useful and sizeable outfit which might be going places, and they "get it" with cryptography. MinimaCentral's view: there are probably more partnerships in the pipeline, and it is hard to get people interested in new ideas, so the Minima team has been busy.
Script IDE tutorial : Pleased to have sponsored a video guide on how to use Minima's Script IDE app. Everything you need to know in three minutes!
Bounty board : A Discord channel, for people to post bounties for things they want done. MinimaCentral championed this, so we hope it will be popular. It should be a straightfoward method to match people who need a discrete task completed with other community members who offer their time and knowledge in exchange for payment. If this takes off, it could be turned into an app.
DePIN : Coinciding datewise with the Wicrypt announcement, Minima invites community members to check out its website, highlighting DePIN - Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks. MinimaCentral view: good to be bringing this out, which been a focus of the Minima Global team for at least a year. Presumably done with help by new agency Athena Labs. We hope that the Minima chain will eventually cater to all (?) use cases, given its versatility and decentralisation.
Wicrypt partnership : "Wicrypt allows users to make money by sharing their Wi-Fi hotspot, where they can earn $WNT tokens through selling data and facilitating connections.[...] Wicrypt will embed Minima nodes into WiFi routers[...] each router will become an active node". MinimaCentral view: This is exactly the sort of technology which excites us. Wicrypt looks like an ambitious project. Hopefully including Minima can be a differentiator for them in a market which has growing competition.
BTSE listing : Wrapped Minima now listed on BTSE. MinimaCentral view: Fragmentation of liquidity is probably not a good thing, but competition is, so we will see. Wrapped Minima is not our focus. We are more interested in the work being done on native Minima.
LTA Labs : A partnership announcement. Starting with a dapp and some gaming, LTA gives the impression of more to come, and the people listed on the LTA website look like a competent collection, including Minima's co-founder Paddy Cerri. The group features Catalans, who are often quietly determined and good businesspeople. The FAQ section of LTA's site invites contact from people wanting to collaborate, and mentions an ICO at an unspecified future date. MinimaCentral's view: one to watch.
Community call : Quite a lot covered. DePin happening – Minima fits – will update website – announcements to come, but partners strict on confidentiality until milestones hit (MinimaCentral view: this is “announcement of announcements”, but fair enough at this stage). Funding - $2m nearly done (MC: important). ShoutOut dapp (MC: someone who is into social media needs to rewrite this and/or Chatter into their own version with a commercial focus). Wallet without your own node – referred to as MegaMMR – in development – helps with exchanges and Apple (MC: impressive, and a direction change we need to think about). Need an “MRC-20” standard (MC: yes!). And with Minima, easy to enforce royalties on token transfers. (MC overall view: well done team; hope it translates into more entrepreneurs and developers arriving soon). Check out the video on YouTube; these are to be monthly in future.
Marketing agency appointed : Athena Labs appointed by Minima Global as marketing agency. The top title on their website is appropriate for the times and the mission: "The Bull-Market is Coming, Are you Ready?". 2023 was the year of launch; 2024 needs to be another year of (different) progress.
2024 roadmap : We are delighted to see work on a decentralised exchange being stepped up. MiniSwap will be improved and a DEX of some sort written, intended to include an order book. Quite how this will look on a fully decentralised system remains to be seen. This will help liquidity for native Minima, and enable other projects, by giving them a potential marketplace for their own tokens. Also key, the team is in the process of closing a $2m funding round, which means their salaries will still be paid in 2024, plus, importantly, there will be funds to re-start marketing and encourage developers to work on projects. More talk of working on partnerships, but at MinimaCentral we are also keen to see basic peer to peer consumer apps. Funding and DEX are key steps to helping these flourish. YouTube.
Worldline competition : The Minima team competed in Worldline's annual challenge in Paris. Worldline is significant; it is Europe's #1 payment processor. The team won no prizes, so failed in that regard, however it was ambitious to promote the world's most decentralised blockchain to the traditional banking community. The effort will have been useful in focussing the Minima team, motivating them, and shaping their vision of what to target in future. Good to see a blockchain team enthusiastically tackling real world commercial usecases outside what can be a crypto echo chamber.
NFTs for sale : A collection of non-fungile tokens, available for purchase from DNa Collections. To MinimaCentral's knowledge, this is the first of its kind on Minima - first NFTs publicly listed for sale, in fact potentially first of anything. Kudos to the creator. Will they expand to list NFTs by others?
MinimaCentral comment : Not news, but reflections after the AMA which, in passing, highlighted decentralisation and the power of Minima. Decentralisation is a core value and fundamental for the future. Minima, with its dapp interface, is a leading system. Paddy talked about being willing to compare Minima against anything else out there, and he was right. As soon as we have some more dapps for people to use, this will become more apparent. Users are eager. However, developers working on Minima are pitifully few, despite all the tools which exist to help. We need a dose of capital, not into Minima, but to bring people into new teams who will deliver. The potential (high risk) rewards are enormous, and the goal is important.
Management AMA : Lots here from this productive team. 1) Telco product ready (video on YouTube). It is add-on marketing options. Aim to sign a letter of intent with a telco this quarter. MinimaCentral view: as anticipated; good. 2) VOLT: aim to announce partner in August. 3) iOS app bounty. Little interest so far from devs. Paddy gave a tip (J2ObjC) on how to do it. MC view: disappointing. Kudos available for someone, and potential working with legend Paddy - money can't buy this. Or, actually it could, if you hire a dev. 4) Jobs board on Discord. 5) Developments coming to some dapps. 6) Incentive rewards programme - for existing users only - to be 75 MINIMA in September and 75 six months afterwards. 7) Removal of initial connection server for new nodes, to remove this point of centralisation. MC view: in line with decentralisation values, which is core. 8) Fund raise beginning, with institutions. Will be slow going in a bear market. 9) Paddy is writing a DEX (decentralised exchange) app. MC view: wow! Major news. Being done by him it will have impressive decentralised credentials. Probably also limited functionality, e.g. he said just MINIMA-USDT. Community version(s) will follow in due course. A DEX can enable all kinds of further activity. 10) They hope to extend MiniFarm for a couple of years; working on some technical points. YouTube.
VOLT AMA : More detail on VOLT. Good discussions underway with vehicle manufacturers, and indeed the system can be generic on most EV charging installations, due to existing hardware. Lots of competition. Minima's edge is in nodes being self-sufficient enough to be able to operate offline, if needed, at the point of connection. Disappointingly, transactions not to be in crypto, initially anyway, which is an opportunity for the future. Minima's use will be in the access control and charging receipt mechanism. If successful, a big node rollout, which would increase the security of the Minima network. We still see this as a significant project on its own and as a bridgehead into the sector. YouTube recording to follow.
VOLT : Announcement of VOLT, "the future of EV charging", with a three minute video on Vimeo. A "real world" solution for matching electric car owners and vehicle charging points. This is important as it will be a blockchain being used to solve everyday needs, efficiently. It will also demonstrate the power of Minima. Kudos to the Minima team. MinimaCentral view: adoption could be massive, as shown by the success of the Helium network, with its hundreds of thousands of hotspots. VOLT will prove utility in the wild and can be a foundation for further products in the automotive, telecoms and similar fields.
Management AMA : These calls are always worthwhile. Lots of topics covered and plenty going on. 1) Recent outage of some nodes caused by a transaction with lots of outputs causing memory failure in some phones; following the patch the data now goes to disk instead. The network continued to operate. There is a bounty programme if anyone spots similar potential attack vectors. 2) Work continues with enterprise customers. Electric vehicles and telcos were mentioned. Hoping for an announcement in Q3. MinimaCentral view: these are difficult to achieve, so we will see. 2) Centralised exchange listing aimed for this year. Decentralised exchange: would support anyone developing one. 3) MiniFarm (encouraging liquidity provision via Uniswap) a success and likely to continue beyond August. 4) Team funding runs out at the end of the year; additional capital being sought. MinimaCentral view: to succeed, the project has to become more community driven, whether additional funding is found or not. YouTube.
Arabian Camels : Announcement of a partnership with the Arabian Camels. "Join Minima in being a part of Arabian Camels Porsche 911 GT3 Mobil 1 Supercup Racing Team." This caused a 3x of the Minima token price within hours, off a gloomy all time low. If there is actually Minima technology being used here, in a high profile industry, then it links beautifully with other work by Minima people in the automotive field, and is important. However, we have learned from other blockchains to be cautious on "partnership" announcements.
MiniSwap : Launch of dapp MiniSwap in the Minima dappstore. This enables the swapping of native Minima for WMINIMA, ETH, USDT and USDC, or vice versa, using a smart contract. As Uniswap does not handle native Minima, MiniSwap is the additional link needed in the trustless ecosystem. Buyers and sellers have to find each other outside the dapp, e.g. via the Minima Discord; we expect someone to develop a commercial site to take this to the next level. More details in the newsletter and on YouTube.
Management AMA : We continue to be impressed with the quantity of work being done by what is a small team. MiniFarm LP staking launch planned for 15th - 500k WMINIMA to be distributed over 90 days to providers in the Uniswap v3 WMINIMA-USDT pool. MiniSwap launch planned for 22nd - opportunity highlighted for people to design and run an order book. Proof of concept done for automotive and now discussing financial aspect. Also a partnership to be announced with a motorsports team, involving an NFT drop. YouTube.
Management AMA : This was exciting! Lots of insights given. MiniSwap release imminent. Training videos for developers. Demo of EV charging project in the works. More languages in Q3/Q4, with community help. Offline developer meetups ditto. NFT projects with people coming into the space. YouTube.
Maximise : Launch of an app to stake Minima. More details at YouTube demo and short YouTube "how to".
Management AMA : Incentivisation of a "Uniswap liquidity provision staking pool" under development, where LP tokens will be stakable for further rewards, payable in Wrapped Minima. New tutorials to be written, e.g. RPC calls. Roadmap to be updated. iPhone app launch intended for 2023. Full recording at YouTube.
Chatter app : Launch of Chatter. Like Nostr, but also not at all. Announced in The Minimalist. While you are reading the newsletter, bookmark it or hit "subscribe".
Management AMA : Key takeaway for us was the versatility of the project and the opportunities. Founder SpartacusRex suggested that he and the team should publish more reference materials, to help builders build. In MinimaCentral's view, this is key! In a decentralised system, work must be decentralised, and there are plenty of keen people out there, ready to get going. In the meantime, as Spartacus pointed out, developers can go beyond the published docs by unzipping the project's published minidapps, reading them and seeing practical examples. Available on YouTube.
Trading : Exchange trading of Wrapped Minima begins. With this, we now have a decentralised benchmark for the project's progress, i.e. liquidity and price on open markets.
Launch! : Token distribution starts. Everyone can try out mainnet instead of testnet. We look foward to projects coming out of stealth mode, and seeing a future of decentralised, cheap, fast transactions and business.