At the beginning of the last century, if you wanted a car, you had to find the local most famous mechanic. He would handcraft every gear and linkage based on your needs. If the car broke down, no one else could fix it, because the specifications for every part existed only in his mind. This is called 'craftsmanship,' also known as 'technical barrier.'
Later, Ford's assembly line came out. Parts were standardized, and the assembly process became transparent. Did the mechanics become unemployed? No, they became chief engineers, and families that could not afford cars all started driving Model Ts.
Current ZK (Zero-Knowledge Proof) development is in the 'handcraft workshop' wilderness era.
I. Expensive 'Cryptographic Priests'
In the blockchain circle, ZK developers are the elite at the top of the pyramid. They are like a group of 'priests' proficient in ancient spells, guarding mathematical logic that ordinary people have never heard of, such as elliptic curves, polynomial commitments, and R1CS circuits.
If you are an ordinary Web3 developer wanting to add a 'privacy voting' or 'anonymous disclosure' feature to your application, you only have two paths:
Grinding Mathematics: Spending two to three years chewing on those obscure cryptographic papers, turning yourself into half a mathematician before writing code.
Hiring at a Premium: Spending exorbitant amounts to recruit the world's few ZK experts.
The result is clear. Most teams looked at the bills and timelines, and in the end sighed and said, 'Forget it, privacy or not, we’ll talk about it later.' This is why the ZK track is well-received but not widely adopted—technology is too sacred, and the threshold is too discouraging.
II. Violent Disassembly: Compact's 'Dimensionality Reduction Attack'
@MidnightNetwork The Compact language being developed is essentially a 'de-sacralization' movement.
If traditional ZK development is like 'hand-grinding lenses', then Compact is providing 'fully automated lens grinding machines'.
The clever aspect of Compact is that it did not invent a high-and-mighty new language, but chose to 'parasitize' on TypeScript. This is an extremely cunning and pragmatic strategy. What is TypeScript? It is the mother tongue of front-end engineers, the most mature screw in the internet industry.
The flattening of ZK by Compact is reflected in three levels of 'resolution':
Logical Resolution: Developers no longer need to think about 'how to convert business logic into polynomial constraints'. You only need to describe your business rules using familiar if-else, loops, and functions, and leave the rest to the compiler.
Identity Resolution: Previously you needed a 'cryptographic expert', now you only need a 'programmer who understands a bit of logic'. This means that the organizational cost of developing privacy applications has shifted from 'finding unicorns' to 'hiring skilled workers'.
Mental Resolution: When you write code, you don't need to constantly worry about whether the underlying mathematical proof is solid. The Compact compiler will automatically generate the underlying circuit description and proof material for you. It's like writing code in a high-level language, without worrying about how the CPU's registers are functioning.
III. The 'Earthquake' of Market Structure
Just like that video teaching you how to replace a phone screen, when a 'difficult task' becomes 'easy', the changes that occur are not just about efficiency.
First is the collapse of pricing power.
Previously, ZK projects dared to offer sky-high financing, largely due to 'talent scarcity premium'. When Compact allows ten million TypeScript developers to write privacy contracts, this premium will quickly shrink. The 'mystique' of technology has disappeared, replaced by 'competition for application scenarios'.
Secondly, the 'explosion' of application ecology.
Why are there so few ZK applications now? Because the costs are too high, everyone only dares to play in high-value, high-yield areas like finance (DeFi). But if the development cost drops to one-tenth of the original, those seemingly 'not so profitable but very useful' scenarios will emerge.
An anonymous employee evaluation system.
A decentralized social reputation protocol based on privacy protection.
A loan proof that can prove asset strength without exposing the balance.
These things were impossible to achieve in the 'manual era' because R&D investment could not recoup costs. But after the popularization of Compact, these will all become easily accessible 'little plugins'.
IV. The 'Valley of Death' between Ideal and Reality
But that said, after I replaced my phone screen, I found a problem: although the screen was replaced, the sealing glue was not applied evenly, and the waterproofing was basically ruined. This is the side effect of 'flattening'—a lower threshold does not mean there are no pitfalls.
Midnight's Compact faces the same challenge. No matter how beautifully the white paper is written, or how intelligently the compiler translates, if the output circuit is inefficient (Proof size is too large or validation time is too long), or if there are security vulnerabilities under extreme boundary conditions, developers will still hesitate to migrate on a large scale.
Developers are a very pragmatic group. Their tolerance for tools is extremely low:
Documentation: If I search for an error and can't find a solution, I'll leave immediately.
Debugging: If I write the wrong logic and the compiler gives me the prompt 'Unknown Error', I will definitely smash my keyboard.
Compatibility: Can it seamlessly integrate into my existing development flow?
Midnight says they will provide a complete development environment and support framework, which sounds great, but the real battlefield is in the first three months after the mainnet goes live. During that time, how quickly bugs in the community are resolved and how frequently tutorials are updated will directly determine whether it becomes the next industry standard or devolves into a 'cool-looking but unused laboratory toy.'
V. Conclusion: The Future After Flattening
I've always felt that a sign of technological maturity is that it becomes 'invisible'.
When you buy things on Taobao, you don't need to know how the underlying distributed database shards and partitions; when you open a webpage, you don't need to know how the TCP/IP protocol handshakes. ZK should be the same.
The goal of Compact should be to make the term 'zero-knowledge proof' disappear from developer discussions. People will no longer discuss 'how do I write a ZK circuit', but will instead discuss 'what functions my privacy contract implements.'
As the comment section of that screen replacement video says: 'So that's how it is, I can write too.'
If that day really comes, privacy applications will have truly begun their narrative. Whether they can succeed, we don't look at PPTs, but at the GitHub commit records after the mainnet goes live.
