An Interview with Minima Co-Founder Paddy Cerri

Guest: Paddy Cerri, Co-Founder and Chief Architect of Minima

Interviewer: Griffin McShane, Thought Leadership with CoinDesk

Over the past few weeks, the collapse of FTX and other major CeFi institutions has brought about new conversations surrounding decentralization. Despite being one of the central tenets of cryptocurrency, recent events have highlighted how crypto venture capital, as well as other major industry players, can be misaligned with the goals of decentralized networks.

In looking to find how crypto will return to its roots, we had the opportunity to speak with Paddy Cerri, the co-founder and chief architect of Minima, an ultra-light blockchain striving to create a censorship-resistant, completely decentralized network. In our conversation, we talk about what true decentralization looks like, why we should care about censorship resistance and how Minima plans to create a better protocol for everyone.

I fell in love with Bitcoin in 2012, and that love affair has never really stopped.

The first cracks in our relationship started to appear after “The SegWit Wars,” when it became clear to me that there were different interested parties. That we were not all on the same page. Not all in the same boat. Miners and users were two very distinct groups, not one and the same. Delving deeper, it became clear to me that what I thought Bitcoin was, was not what it was.

I was a bit player, not an equal. I was a user, not a miner. The mantra started: “Verify, don’t trust!” Yes, yes, obviously that is important, but verifying has nothing to do with censorship resistance. Only the miners decide that. And that stung. That hurt. That gnawed at the back of my mind.

And so – Minima. As a coder, how could I not try and write my own version of Bitcoin? My vision of a better version of Bitcoin. Frankly, I would be derelict in my duties if I did not attempt to better Bitcoin. The ultimate programmatic life form. The ultimate piece of code. How can any coder resist? It’s too much. It’s intoxicating. I didn’t realize how absolute this desire was until I started coding up my own version.

Censorship resistance is achieved through decentralization.

Every single current blockchain is totally centralized. The financial incentives in mining or staking always lead to economies of scale and massive centralization. Once you own 51% – or can coerce 51% – you can censor whatever you like.

Censorship resistance with regard to Information means always being able to send information from one party to another.

Censorship resistance with regard to value means always being able to send value from one party to another. But it also means no party being able to control, inflate or dilute the supply. No party being able to destroy the value you are trying to transfer. That’s just another form of censorship.

No middle man to appease. No criteria to satisfy. No hoops to jump through. No critical single points of failure to attack.

You would think there are other ways to achieve censorship resistance. Techniques other than decentralization... but there aren’t.

Minimas’ protocol is so compact that everyone can run a complete node on their phone.

Minima does not financially incentivize mining. You mine your own transactions. All the work is added together to make blocks. All the blocks are added together to make a chain.

Minima is the only truly decentralized base-layer protocol for censorship-resistant value transfer.

Since Minima places decentralization above all else, the protocol must be finished when we launch and so the process has taken longer. Regardless, we’ve learned a lot along the way from the battlefield of blockchains.