About MAC!
Mina
Mina is often referred to as the worlds lightest blockchain. It is a cryptocurrency reliant on the innovative zero-knowledge technology, which, very briefly, is a wide range of mathematical or cryptographic protocols permitting one to prove existence of certain information without revealing the information itself. This is a powerful tool which makes it possible for Mina to allow off-chain smart contracts which can be validated without knowledge of the details of the contract. MAC! is just one of the innovative projects using this approach.
Inspirations
The very idea of arbitrated contract is nothing new. It is heavily used by many protocols, the Bisq decentralized exchange is just one of the examples. The idea of MacPacks for sharing the smart contract data between the participants is inspired by slatepacks from GRIN cryptocurrency, in which similar messages are exchange between the participants in order to interactively build a transaction.
Behind MAC!
This application has been developed by Marek Narozniak as part of the zkIgnite program. Marek has been friends with Mina for quite a while before zkIgnite program which was the competition for which MAC! was one of the many great projects submitted.