Please note this information is taken directly from the official Mina Protocol website

GETTING STARTED RUNNING A NODE

With the world’s lightest blockchain, running a node is easier than ever. Here you’ll find everything you need to get up and running.

Node Overview
Mina is secured by proof-of-stake consensus. Unlike other legacy protocols, any participant can validate transactions like a full node — making decentralization possible. And here, blockchain node operators can play two roles: they can produce blocks, and/or they can produce SNARKs

BLOCK PRODUCERS

Similar to miners or stakers in other protocols, block producers can be selected to produce a block and earn block rewards, coinbase, transaction fees and network fees. Block producers can also be SNARK producers and generate their own proofs.

Read official documentation

SNARK PRODUCERS

SNARK producers help compress data in the network by generating SNARK proofs of transactions. They then sell those SNARK proofs to block producers on the Snarketplace in return for a portion of the block rewards

Read official documentation

Running a Node Steps

1: Walk through the process of setting up a Mina node.
2: Learn how to generate a keypair for use with the network.
3: How to connect to the network and begin producing blocks. 

Requirements

Software: macOS, Linux (currently supports Debian 9 and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS), or any host with Docker

Note: Windows is not officially supported at this time. However, community members succeeded in setting up nodes using Windows Subsystem for Linux. Click here for instructions on using Windows, which are created by the community. Additionally Windows users can use the Docker documentation.

Hardware: Sending and receiving mina does not require any special hardware, but running a block producer on the Mina network currently requires:

  • at least a 8-core processor
  • at least 16GB of RAM

Note that if you plan on running a snark worker node at the same time as a block producer, you may need more RAM. GPUs aren’t currently required, but may be required for node operators when the protoctol is upgraded.

Network: At least 1 Mbps connection

VM Instances: O(1) Labs has tested running nodes on several cloud providers, and recommends the following instances for basic node operator needs. Keep in mind that custom requirements as well as different cost constraints may require a different instance type.

Check out this guide on how to configure your Mina node on Google Cloud.

Installation

The newest binary releases can be found below. Instructions are provided for macOS and Linux below: This is a large download, around 1GB, so the install might take some time.

Warning

If you installed mina from a previous release, you’ll need to upgrade it so that you won’t get banned by the network for using an older client. See instructions below for upgrading both macOS and Linux builds.