MINA Minute: Piconbello

Here is the latest in our series of ‘Mina Minute’ articles, a series in which we talk to members of the Mina Ecosystem. This time we spoke to Emre from Piconbello, a Mina staking provider currently offering 0% fees (correct as of Sep 12th 2021).

Where are you based? 

UK (some team members are located in EU countries)

What experience do you have in the world of crypto / staking / validating etc? 

I personally advised on a few crypto projects years back. I still continue to help projects by finding developers and connecting them with the right platform/chains and mentoring developers to onboard into the blockchain ecosystem. I started validating around 2014, working with nodes, endpoints for payment processing and many other applications. Since 2019, I have been mostly involved with Piconbello, focusing more on infrastructure and ecosystem development than staking.  

What attracted you to the Mina Protocol project? 

The technical development achievements and possibilities allowed from zero-knowledge.

How did you first find out about the project?

That was a bit funny story. I had an operation and I was checking out my different projects on my phone. Projects in crypto are generally portrayed as doing everything while actually giving away on other aspects, there is normally always a trade-off between one thing or another. Normally I simply skip these projects, I don’t have time to go over details, since these changes are mostly effective for the chain’s aim but they don’t have any significant technical improvement and without these improvements, they don’t interest me.

Thankfully, because of the state I was in, I had a lot of time which resulted in me being able to check Mina’s story and that got my attention.

How does someone stake their MINA to you and what happens when they do? 

They can just load their Mina wallets with some balance and go through staking process on Clorio or Auro for convenience. After staking, each staker goes through 2 epoch staking confirmation in which they don’t receive any rewards. After this period, they get rewards after every epoch. Their funds are not locked or sent to another address in this process, they can send or use them however they like. Also, they continue to receive rewards after transferring their balance for 2 epochs, which neutralises the staking confirmation period.

How often do you pay out rewards and can people know when to expect them?

We process payments once per epoch. The exact time frame is mostly 12-36 hours after epoch ends. Having a lot of delegators make the process significantly longer. We take our time to avoid any mistake since once we do a mistake there is no way to revert it.

Which wallet do you recommend people use for MINA? 

As long as it’s safe all wallets are fine. We have 2 audited wallets (Auro and Clorio). For safety and convenience, we suggest Ledger. Since we also need a UI for the wallet, I suggest Auro mainly for a better user experience with having Clorio as a backup.

Apart from Mina, what other projects do you think have big potential?

I don’t like speculating, but crypto space was very limited at the start. The first significant improvement happened with Ethereum brought smart contracts. Since then, smart contracts have brought a lot of possibilities but they were still very limited to the blockchain’s constraints. Zero-knowledge is now creating new possibilities outside these limits. I see a lot of potential on ZK projects for the future, that’s also our team’s direction.

For more info visit on staking Mina with Piconbello visit https://mina.piconbello.com

Please note this website is not affiliated with any staking providers, we highly recommend to do your own research.

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