Smart Contracts (SNAPPs)

Snapps = Dapps + Privacy + Off-Chain Data + Scalability#

As the world’s lightest blockchain, Mina enables an entirely new category of applications called Snapps3 : Snarkified Applications. Snapps are featurewise similar to Dapps on Ethereum, but are superior thanks to three specific properties:

Verify the integrity of a piece of data without disclosing what it is. Verify correct execution of expensive computations. Significant scalability benefits. These types of applications aren’t necessarily new - in a way both exist as present day blockchains: ZCash as a Snapp with property 1, and Mina as a Snapp with property 2.

A Snapp is also significantly more efficient than a Dapp on Ethereum. In order for the Ethereum world computer to make a commitment to its users about the execution of a Dapp, every node and miner on the network has to run the same computation. This is wildly inefficient. With a Snapp on Mina, the Snapp gets executed once by its developer, after which all other nodes can just verify the associated SNARK proof. One can make the same argument for SNARK powered Layer 2 Dapps on Ethereum, however those Dapps are still encumbered by the limited throughput of the main chain, whereas a Snapp on Mina benefits from the scalability potential of the Mina blockchain thanks to its succinct nature.

In general, a Snapp on Mina has the following workflow:

Identify the code to run, open source it if it isn’t already
Use the code to deploy a SNARK circuit via a function call on Mina
Source the data to perform the computation on
Call the function with the relevant data
Computation runs on chain, similar to a smart contract [ready 6-12 months after mainnet]
Attach the SNARK proof returned from the function to a Mina address
Mina executes transactions based on result of the SNARK proof

What else to add#

Brief overview, including brief example use cases (non-technical aspects)
link developers to learn how to write a Snapp or view snapp developer docs