Brothers, I've been observing the privacy track for quite a while, and there has always been a deadlock: either completely transparent (regular public chains), where data is fully exposed; or completely anonymous (like Monero), which regulators shake their heads at.
@MidnightNetwork This operation is indeed a bit cheeky—wanting privacy while being compliant, how is that possible?
The core is a dual-state ledger architecture
A network running two ledgers: a public ledger that is open for anyone to check, and a private ledger hidden with ZK proofs. Want to prove you have 100 $NIGHT without exposing your exact address? Just provide a ZK proof, and the verifier only knows '≥100', not the specific number.
How practical is this 'selective disclosure'? For example: if you want to play the on-chain game Sea Battle, you publicly register your ID, but the battleship positions are encrypted with ZK; the result of firing is privately verified, and only when the ship sinks is the win or loss revealed. Throughout the process, you don't know how the other side is positioned, but the result is indisputable.
The technical data is solid.
I checked the official browser, and the mainnet block time is stable at 6 seconds, with over 1 million blocks already produced during the testnet phase. The TPS target is designed to be 1000+, and we will see the specific data after the mainnet runs for a few months.
The most impressive part is the developer friendliness: the smart contract language is called Compact, based on TypeScript — which means you don't have to learn Solidity or touch Rust, front-end developers can jump right in. This move clearly aims to attract Ethereum developers.
The token model has some merits.
Dual token system: $NIGHT is the governance token, with a total supply of 24 billion, currently circulating about 16.6 billion. DUST is the resource coin used to pay gas fees, automatically generated by holding NIGHT, non-transferable, and decays over time. This separates 'ownership' and 'usage rights', preventing gas tokens from being speculated on while enabling private payments.
The airdrop is generous: glacier airdrop + treasure hunt mine in two phases, covering over 8 million addresses and issuing 4.5 billion tokens. Over 800,000 qualified addresses participated, making this community foundation more genuine than many projects.
The background determines the ceiling.
Charles Hoskinson personally invested $200 million without asking for a penny from VCs. What does this mean? No investors are pressuring you to realize short-term profits, no unlocking and dumping pressure, and the roadmap can proceed at its own pace.
The roadmap is divided into four phases: Hilo (already online), Kūkolu (hybrid mainnet), Mōhalu (incentive testnet), and Hua (cross-chain interoperability). Each phase has an interval of 1-3 months, not the kind of project that promises something for five years with no results.
Finally, let’s speak plainly.
The privacy track used to be 'either you can't survive without regulation, or you can't thrive with regulation'. Midnight's approach is 'make what needs to be public public, and keep what needs to be hidden hidden' — businesses can use it (compliant auditing), DeFi can be played (private transactions), and developers can write contracts in TypeScript (without needing to learn anew).
With ZK technology as a foundation, Charles invested $200 million out of his own pocket, and there are real data from over 1 million testnet blocks. I’m in on this.