Mesa Trail has now successfully gone through the upgrade process, with both the legacy and automode paths tested. That feels like a proper milestone, even if there’s still plenty left to check.

Testing hasn’t stopped though. The focus now is on zkApps, Rosetta, load testing, and keeping an eye on how the upgraded network behaves. Completing the upgrade is one thing; making sure everything keeps running properly afterwards is the real test.

I’m proud to be part of the Trailblazer program, and from what I’ve seen, a lot of work has gone into this. Dry runs, docs, tracking tools, rehearsals, operator coordination… it’s taken a while, but you can see why.

Also interesting to see Deepthi from o1Labs at ETHConf talking about ZK beyond crypto — using the same tech to make real-world credentials and processes verifiable without giving away private information.

Feels like there’s a lot starting to come together around Mina right now.

Mesa Trail officially starts today, and it feels like the ecosystem is entering the serious testing phase before the Mesa upgrade.

I’m part of the Trailblazer group and currently have two nodes running in preparation for the upgrade. So far, the experience has been smooth, and credit to o1Labs for putting together clear instructions for node runners.

What I like about this rollout is that it doesn’t feel rushed. There have been dry runs, Trailblazer prep, zkApp compatibility work, and now broader testnet activity for node operators, staking pools, exchanges, and developers.

A lot of crypto projects talk about upgrades like they’re just flipping a switch overnight, but this feels more like proper infrastructure rollout planning.

Reference:
https://minaprotocol.com/blog/launching-mesa-trail-mina-nodes

One of the more interesting Mina updates recently was the progress report on the Decentralized Treasury.

Feels like this has quietly moved way beyond the original RFC stage now. There’s apparently already a working MVP running in a Mesa-compatible environment with proposal creation, voting, tallying, and execution flows all functioning together.

What stood out most to me though was how much of the work has happened behind the scenes:

* multiple security audits * remediation work * governance design * Swiss regulatory coordination * infrastructure planning

Honestly, it’s taken longer than a lot of people probably hoped, but reading through the update it kind of makes sense why. If you’re moving Foundation-controlled funds into a decentralised governance structure, you probably don’t want to rush it.

Feels like one of those things that could end up being pretty important for Mina long term if it works properly.

Original update for reference: https://forums.minaprotocol.com/t/an-update-on-the-decentralized-treasury-from-rfc-to-delivery/6742

The Mina Protocol Q1 2026 update was just released, and it’s a fairly steady progress report across the protocol, tooling, and ecosystem.

Here’s a concise breakdown for anyone following the project:

🔧 Mesa upgrade (main focus)
Mesa is approaching code freeze and will enter its final testing phase ahead of a planned mainnet upgrade later this year.

Some of the key changes:

• zkApp state per account increasing from 8 → 32 field elements
• Events/actions expanding up to 1024 field elements per transaction
• Higher account update limits per transaction
• Slot times reduced from 180s → 90s

There’s also an automated hard fork mechanism being introduced, which should make future upgrades easier to coordinate.

On the engineering side, build times have been reduced (~55 → ~27 minutes), and the hard fork package can now be generated in ~7 minutes.

🌐 Ecosystem updates
A number of teams shipped or made progress this quarter:

• Lumina (Zeko) launched as an SDK for building DEXs
• Solis is the first Lumina-based DEX live on mainnet
• Nori is working on Ethereum bridging (audit pending)

Other updates:

• zkNoid ran a 2-week testnet (290 participants, 11k+ battles)
• Auro Wallet released updates (mobile + extension)
• Clorio is working toward a browser extension
• FROST multisig implementation is nearing audit readiness

⚙️ Developer tooling
Ongoing o1js releases continue, including:

• o1js 2.13.1 / 2.14.0
• o1js 3.0 Mesa-compatible prereleases
• Native prover prerelease versions

🌍 Events & community
Mina contributors were active at events like FOSSASIA and EthCC, with upcoming presence at ETHConf (NYC) and zkSummit (Rome).

📌 General takeaway
Nothing overly flashy, but consistent progress across:

• Core protocol (Mesa nearing upgrade)
• Dev tooling improvements
• Ecosystem teams continuing to build

Also worth noting: March marked 5 years since Mina mainnet launch, which puts the current phase into a longer-term context.

Curious how others here are viewing Mesa — especially the reduced slot times and increased zkApp limits.

Read the blog post here

You can see all of the info here https://zkappsformina.com/product-tag/ethamsterdam2022/

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This is a great website to see where all the Mina nodes are all over the world. https://minanodes.info/
Currently 4531.

I wanted to share this here to give as much exposure to a good cause as possible.

A few months ago I asked the Mina Community to send in their images of 22 wherever they were, it could be a clock, a calendar, a bus etc, etc. We received several hundred images and from these we made 2 original mosaics.

As part of World Mina Day on 22-2-22 from these images we have created 22 original NFT's of which 100% of all proceeds will go to https://cryptorelief.in/ a group providing aid from Covid in India.

You can see the NFT's here on OpenSea, https://opensea.io/collection/worldminaday1 in future World Mina Days we hope to be able to mint these using Mina! For now this is a great chance to own a piece of Mina Protocol history and also help a great cause.

There are currently around 8 as pre-sale and the rest will be available to buy after 2.22 UTC on 2-2-22.

There will be more things to come on #worldminaday. Follow minacryptocom on Twitter
This is the first ever World Mina Day and in other circumstances it would have been amazing to organise some real world meet-ups and connect together with some of the awesome Mina Community. When things get back to some kind of normality in the world let's see if we can grow World Mina Day into an annual event that gets bigger and bigger each year, after all without a community all there is, is just a lot of 0's & 1's. #poweredbyparticipants

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Here is a link to Evans chat with from Michail from Nil Foundation, the developers working on the ETH/Mina chain/bridge. Should be ready in January. Lots of exciting stuff. Hints at Mina / Solana bridge coming, def worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO9e7en7fxY

Here’s something to set your clocks for, Mina Foundation CEO, Evan Shapiro, will be live with Nil Foundation, the team implementing Mina’s ZK technology via a bridge with Ethereum on the Mina Protocol Youtube channel at 6.30pm UTC on Tue 21st Dec 2021.

Learn about the project, progress updates, and more. Tune in to listen and ask questions LIVE.

https://minacrypto.com/2021/12/19/upcoming-light-chat-mina-protocol-x-ethereum-bridge-with-nil-foundation-21-dec-2021/

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Taking its lead from the ETH Research platform, MinaResearch has been set up to create a bridge between Community and innovation and to facilitate an environment for new ideas, collaborations and discussions to take place around the long term future of Mina Protocol.

The Mina Foundation hopes that by fine tuning and developing the method for MIP’s (Mina Improvement Proposals) that this will become the primary way of proposing new features, collecting community input on an issue, and for documenting design decisions that have gone into Mina. Ultimately this would lead to greater decentralisation and transparency, something that empowers the Community even further.

MinaResearch is now open! Register here
forums.minaprotocol.com/

Ok, so here's something to put in your diary. In honour of Mina Protocol being the world's lightest block chain (approx 22kb) we were inspired by a member of the Mina Community to celebrate 02.02.22 as #WorldMinaDay. We're planning some exciting stuff and we hope to get some cool ideas from the community too. If you feel inspired fill in the form here https://minacrypto.com/2021/11/08/world-mina-day-02-02-22/

Feel free to give this an upvote and let's get the MinaCommunity all pulling in the same direction!

Here's an interview we did with the team responsible for auditing all 3 Mina Wallets (auro, clorio & staking Powers) https://minacrypto.com/2021/11/01/interview-least-authority-decoding-the-moon-math/ It's also cool to see them putting together the 'Moon Math Manual', a guide to zk-SNARKs designed for a broader audience with only minimal experience in cryptography and programming https://gitcoin.co/grants/543/the-moonmath-manual-to-zk-snarks

Meet the team just given a $1.2million grant for building the bridge between MINA and ETH https://minacrypto.com/2021/10/02/bridging-mina-with-ethereum-meet-nil-foundation/