Mina Block Producer Installation Guide

About Mina

Mina keeps a constant-size chain — about 22 kB — using recursive zk-SNARKs, so a node verifies the whole chain without storing it. Consensus is Ouroboros Samasika, and the validator role is called a block producer: your node is selected to produce blocks in proportion to the stake delegated to it, checked against a staking ledger that is fixed one epoch in advance.

Facts that shape the setup:

• Stake for the current epoch was snapshotted an epoch ago. New delegations do not affect your block production until the relevant epoch begins — there is nothing wrong with your node if a fresh delegation changes nothing today.
• Block production requires the private key to be online and unlocked. There is no remote-signer split in the standard setup, so host security is the whole of key security.
• Delegators are paid by the block producer. Mina does not distribute rewards to delegators on-chain; payouts are an off-chain obligation you take on when you accept delegation.
• SNARK work is a separate role. A block producer buys completed SNARK work from a marketplace; running a SNARK coordinator/worker is optional and is a different job from producing blocks.

Requirements

Component	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	4 cores	8 cores
RAM	16 GB	32 GB
Disk	256 GB SSD	512 GB SSD
Network	100 Mbps, public IP	1 Gbps, static IP
OS	Ubuntu 22.04	Ubuntu 24.04

Prepare the host

sudo apt -y update && sudo apt -y upgrade
sudo apt -y install docker.io jq curl
sudo systemctl enable --now docker
sudo usermod -aG docker "$USER"

Log out and back in so the group membership applies.

Open the P2P port

sudo ufw allow 22/tcp
sudo ufw allow 8302/tcp
sudo ufw enable

8302/tcp must be reachable inbound. A block producer that cannot be dialled still syncs, but it gossips poorly and can miss its own block slots.

Create the key

Generate the block producer key with the same image you will run, so the key format matches the daemon:

mkdir -p ~/mina/keys && chmod 700 ~/mina/keys
docker run --rm -it -v ~/mina/keys:/keys minaprotocol/mina-daemon:latest \
  mina advanced generate-keypair --privkey-path /keys/my-wallet
sudo chmod 600 ~/mina/keys/my-wallet

The passphrase you set here is required at every start. Back up ~/mina/keys/my-wallet, my-wallet.pub and the passphrase separately and offline. Losing the key means losing the producer identity and everything delegated to it.

Run the daemon

docker run --name mina -d --restart=always \
  -p 8302:8302 \
  -p 127.0.0.1:3085:3085 \
  -v ~/mina/keys:/keys:ro \
  -v ~/mina/.mina-config:/root/.mina-config \
  -e MINA_PRIVKEY_PASS="<your-passphrase>" \
  minaprotocol/mina-daemon:latest \
  daemon \
    --block-producer-key /keys/my-wallet \
    --peer-list-url https://bootnodes.minaprotocol.com/networks/mainnet.txt \
    --external-port 8302 \
    --insecure-rest-server

Bind the GraphQL port to 127.0.0.1 as shown. Port 3085 can read node state and must never be exposed publicly.

Pin the image to an explicit release tag rather than latest for anything you intend to keep running, and record the tag and the chain ID the node reports — that pair is what proves which network you actually joined.

Verify

docker exec -it mina mina client status

Check in the output:

• Sync status: Synced;
• Chain id matches the network you intended to join;
• Block producers running: 1;
• a non-trivial peer count.

Confirm the daemon sees your key as a producer:

docker exec -it mina mina accounts list

Confirm from outside

Your node's own view is not proof of participation. Once the node is synced and your public key holds or has been delegated stake, check the public explorer:

https://minascan.io/mainnet/validator/<your-public-key>/delegations

If you need the exact staking-ledger picture rather than an explorer's view, export the ledger from your own synced node and sum the balances that delegate to your key:

docker exec -it mina mina ledger export staking-epoch-ledger > staking-ledger.json

Delegator payouts

Mina pays block rewards to the producer, not to delegators. If you accept delegation you are taking on a manual payout obligation: compute each epoch's rewards from the staking ledger, apply your published fee, and send the transfers. Publish your fee and schedule before you accept delegation, and treat every payout batch as an operation that needs a fresh preflight and an explicit confirmation — an automated payout loop with an unlocked key is a standing risk that is hard to bound.

Upgrade

Mina hard forks are coordinated and require running the release built for the new chain. Pull the announced tag, stop the container, start it with the same volumes and key, then re-check sync status, chain ID and producer count before considering the upgrade complete.

Monitoring

Watch: container state and restart count, sync status, chain ID, peer count, block producer count, disk free, and — from outside — whether blocks you were scheduled to produce actually landed.

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Created by POSTHUMAN validators

Website: https://posthuman.digital