Mina Foundation Raises $92M in Private Token Sale

Mina Foundation, the entity behind privacy-focused Mina Protocol, has raised $92 million in a token sale co-led by FTX Ventures and Three Arrows Capital, the foundation said in a press release on 17 March.

According to the announcement, the strategic MINA token sale saw participation from Alan Howard, Brevan Howard, Amber Group, Blockchain.com, Circle Ventures, Pantera Capital, and five existing backers of the ecosystem. While no details were revealed around the terms of the token sale — such as the price at which the tokens were sold, or the percentage of the treasury the round represented — venture capital investors usually receive a discount for such private sales. The CEO of the Mina Foundation, Evan Shapiro, said in a statement:

“We are pleased to have worked with the Mina ecosystem and world-class funds on this $92M raise. This validation from some of the most respected entities in crypto bolsters our aim to ensure that Mina becomes the go-to privacy and end-to-end security layer for Web3 while remaining powered by participants.”

The newly acquired funds will be used to accelerate Mina’s adoption as the “leading zero-knowledge platform within Web3” by attracting “world-class” developers to the protocol. As such, most of the raised capital will be used for developer grants, awarded to proposals that could help support the Mina protocol.

Mina is a layer 1 blockchain network that uses zero-knowledge proofs technology — which does not share private information while using decentralized applications (dApps) — to help developers build privacy-focused “zkApps”. The easy programmability of these smart contracts enable the creation of “Web3 applications that preserve user data privacy”.