Recently, I've been chatting with friends about on-chain interactions, and everyone shares the same feeling: it's expensive. Regardless of the market conditions, we retail investors are always paying the highest 'tolls' to miners and nodes, sometimes costing us dozens of dollars without even a sound in return. It really feels like we're paying rent for the network while still being a sub-landlord.
But a couple of days ago, I took a closer look at the white paper (Tokenomics) sent by @MidnightNetwork and found that they created something called 'DUST Capacity Marketplace,' which translates to 'Capacity Trading Market.' The name sounds a bit convoluted, but the logic is very down-to-earth. I think this is a clever solution in the privacy sector.
We need to first understand where the pain points are. In the past, privacy chains had a very high threshold for use. You had to first buy its native coin and then nervously figure out how to pay for the Gas specifically used for privacy transactions. This was a disaster for project parties; if you wanted to attract a new user, the first step would already be blocked by a complicated coin purchasing process.
So how did Midnight do it this time? They created an extremely market-oriented yet practical cooperative economy. Simply put, if you hold $NIGHT, the system will linearly generate DUST for you, which is essentially a 'by-product' specifically used as fuel for privacy transactions. Here’s the key point: if you are a die-hard coin hoarder who rarely engages in privacy transactions, this DUST will remain idle.
On other chains, this is called resource idleness and is considered a waste. But in Midnight, you can list this surplus DUST on their P2P market to sell directly or rent it out. Doesn't this turn our idle resources into assets that can generate rental income?
Think about it from the perspective of a dApp developer; how great is this? Suppose I want to create an institutional-level privacy OTC platform on it, I definitely don’t want my clients to bear the complex Gas purchasing process. I can easily go to this 'capacity market' and rent DUST in bulk at low prices from large holders, and then pay for my clients' privacy Gas in the background. This essentially creates a 'second-hand trading platform for privacy computing power and network bandwidth.'
This expansion for the entire ecosystem is a very tangible strategic support. Developers have lowered the customer acquisition threshold, holders have more passive income, network resources have been activated, and the protocol fees generated in the market will flow back to the on-chain treasury, benefiting the entire ecosystem and forming a positive cycle. This security guarantee is not based on slogans but relies on an economic model that encourages everyone to maintain network resources voluntarily.
Although the current 'Mohalu' phase still needs the mainnet to be fully operational to verify market depth and the final pricing mechanism, this logic of directly turning idle network resources into cash flow is indeed much more promising than those public chains that only cling to 'zero-sum games' and survive through reckless inflation. Recent discussions in the community have also noticeably become more active; people are no longer just concerned about the price of coins, but rather what kind of depth this 'capacity market' can achieve after the mainnet goes live.
I am very optimistic about this project because it is not just making promises; it is using a very practical and smart economic approach to solve the most troublesome problems of the privacy track, namely 'threshold' and 'resource utilization.' To be honest, compared to those still talking about grand narratives, Midnight's approach of 'allowing coin hoarders to collect rent and helping developers to ease their concerns' feels much more real to me. I won’t say much more; I have to manually cancel those failed transactions stuck on the chain, which is really annoying. I hope the Midnight mainnet arrives soon so we can experience what it feels like to be a 'landlord.'