The evolution will not be centralised
Minima is Different
Minima is not like other coins. Or other blockchains. Or other protocols. It’s different.
‘They’re all different!’ — sure, but minima is different in a different way.
Minima is different to all other cryptos in the same way that bitcoin was different from all other money…
‘What’s its use case?’
Without a use case it will crash and burn, so it’s a fair question, but to properly understand the answer to this requires some bigger-than-normal thinking.
That’s because the ‘use case’ of minima is to totally change everything.
‘Here we go… some alt-coin fanboy trying to convince everyone that his favourite coin is the best.’
Maybe. Bear with me… argue with me on the Discord once you’ve finished.
True Decentralisation
The only true value proposition for a blockchain is censorship resistance. There’s no reason to use a blockchain unless that is your aim, a centralised server will do the same job far more cheaply and efficiently.
The only way to achieve censorship resistance is through decentralisation. ‘Decentralisation’ is not a spectrum, it’s a verb, it’s a direction of travel, a pathway set out by the rules of the game.
A system is only as decentralised as its most centralised component.
Minima is a system designed to start 100% decentralised and remain 100% decentralised forever.
At launch, Minima will have more than a million full mining and validating nodes, all working effortlessly to collaboratively secure the network.
It is impossible for anyone to take control of it. It is impossible for anyone to shut it down. It cannot be censored.
True decentralisation is necessary but not sufficient.
Runs on a phone
Minima runs in full on a phone. A device that (nearly) everyone has.
This means that everything that your phone currently does, can now be done securely, privately, and fully decentralised with you 100% in control.
Minima opens up an opportunity for something much bigger than security and privacy.
It gives us access to genuine freedom. Freedom from interference, freedom from censorship, freedom from the shackles of rampant financialised globalisation, built-in currency devaluation and debt-based economics.
Minimalists rely on no one. We all verify and build the chain. Minimalists know that freedom isn’t free, but we know it’s worth the cost. The cost is personal responsibility.
Freedom without tools is pointless and chaotic. Minima gives us a platform to do something with our freedom.
The Minima apk acts like a small server. Decentralised apps on Minima (miniDapps) are genuinely decentralised — only you hold the keys to your copy of your miniDapp. Minimalists do not log into any remote servers to interact with the platform, there is no intermediary that you have to trust.
Minima gives us the substructure, and the smartphone that currently sits in 5 billion pockets (and rising) gives us the hardware.
If all the largest servers in the world go down, if everyone on the Minima team disappears, if the original developer, China, Russia, India, Brazil, Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and the USA all decide they really don’t like the miniDapp you’ve just downloaded… they can’t do anything about it.
These Tools of Freedom
True freedom in the digital age is the freedom to build our own solutions to problems that powerful entities profit from. This is the only kind of freedom that allows for meaningful change.
This is freedom sneaking in the back door of the most ubiquitous piece of technology the world has ever known.
If you think about it, this is the only place true digital freedom can really come from; something that billions of people already interact with, using tools we already have.
For the first time in the history of humanity, we will have one digital ecosystem which lives natively on a device everyone has and which gives a potential platform for (almost) everything in the digital and IRL worlds: value transfer, information transfer, commerce, social media, wallets, banking, loans, community credit, local distributed energy, and so on.
At first glance this might seem more like a nightmare monopoly than a techno-utopia.
But on closer inspection, it’s the exact opposite of a monopoly… it’s not even a company.
It’s a network that we own; no one leads, no one follows.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to join and no one can throw you out.
We all invest the minimum amount of energy (in the form of your phone doing tiny bits of cooperative PoW throughout the day) and because there are so many of us, this culminates in the most decentralised and secure blockchain in the world.
A community of equals working together for the good of the community and the security of the citadel.
Possibilities
What happens when you hold in the palm of your hand your own private server with your own keys to your own self-owned bank account, wallet and decentralised app store?
What happens when anyone can build anything for anyone and the marketplaces of software and ideas are not filtered and modulated by corporations, corruption and broken monetary systems?
Imagine a marketplace where you don’t need permission from the government and the global banking system to exchange goods and services.
Imagine a P2P messaging app that is genuinely P2P secure and encrypted, that cannot be shut down, censored or controlled by any entity or state power.
Imagine a bank that you own.
Imagine a currency that exists natively on your phone which you can spend without telling the government and exchange instantly and trustlessly.
Imagine an internet not owned by 4 nation-sized tech companies. Imagine an internet that we own.
Imagine a twitter that couldn’t be strong-armed by governments and commercial actors.
Imagine if Web3 actually meant something.
Imagine doing everything you currently do in the digital world, but being fully in control of how you do it, who knows what you are doing, and without having to wait for permission from your bank, government, or ISP to do it.
Imagine never again having to agree to terms of service that trade your most intimate data for access to basics. Imagine being in control of your own data.
Imagine a frictionless incentive to buy local goods from local producers with a local currency, keeping locally produced value in the community instead of strip-mining community value and exacerbating inequality to line the pockets of faceless shareholders and pointless bankers.
Imagine the largest group of people in the history of humanity working cooperatively to create an ecosystem that requires no government or any other ‘trusted’ third party skimming value off the top and changing the rules to enrich themselves.
Imagine what we can do when cooperation, rather than competition, is the fuel that drives us forward.
Imagine the systems of money, economics, thought, commerce and localisation that we can build.
Imagine all of that, in the palm of your hand, on a device you already own. Imagine all of that from a download.
You’re imagining Minima, and it’s already here.
Pssst… If someone sent you this article, ask them for their invite code before you sign up!
Notes: I’m not part of the team, but I run a node, I have followed the project for a long time and I really want Minima to fulfil its obvious promise, so I am biased!
This is not intended as a technical piece — their website documents are good for deeper understanding and the team and others seem willing to answer questions on their discord server.
