Let me first talk about my background so you can judge how much reference value my words have.
I started getting involved in the cryptocurrency industry in 2019, participating in dozens of projects, some of which made money, but many more lost. I have been scammed by project parties, have experienced collective sell-offs after lock-up periods expired, and have bought tokens that seemed flawless in their economics but ultimately went to zero.
So now when I look at new projects, my first reaction is not excitement, but caution.
When I first looked at Midnight, to be honest, I felt a bit irritated. I've seen the label "privacy public chain" too many times, each claiming to change the world, and most of them ultimately disappear. I almost just swiped away.
But a friend said, you really should research its specific mechanisms and not just look at the labels.
I spent several days researching carefully and then realized that I almost made a lazy mistake—using an outdated label to negate something completely different.
The first point that made me take it seriously: NIGHT will not be consumed.
In the vast majority of public chains I've studied, the usage logic of native tokens is the same: you make a transaction, consume a certain amount of gas, the token decreases, goodbye.
What does this mean? It means that tokens are consumables. You hold it because you want to use it or you bet that others will use it. Once the demand for network usage decreases or cheaper alternatives appear, the demand for consumables will decline.
$NIGHT is completely not this logic.
You hold NIGHT, it continuously generates DUST for your address, you use DUST to do things, and NIGHT doesn’t decrease by a bit. NIGHT is a generator, not fuel.
I turned this logic over in my mind several times to confirm that I hadn’t misunderstood. Then I realized this is a fundamental difference—holding NIGHT is not about holding a resource that will be consumed, but about holding an asset that continuously generates usage rights.
The long-term value logic of these two things is completely different.
A token that will be consumed relies on continuous new demand coming in; a token that continuously generates usage rights relies on the long-term existence and continued use of the network. The former is more like a traffic business, while the latter is more like an infrastructure business. I have more confidence in infrastructure businesses.
The second point that eased my concerns: their proactive suppression of early speculative behavior.
I've seen too many projects that outwardly say "for the long-term ecosystem," but in reality, the entire token distribution serves early investors—massive amounts of chips given to private placements, low prices, short lock-ups, and as soon as they unlock, they dump, and then the team says "market behavior, we are powerless."
Midnight's distribution design feels different to me because it has several choices that deliberately took a more difficult path:
Token distribution does not involve private placements and is 100% open to the public. No VCs are acquiring chips at $0.01 and then waiting for retail investors to take over.
The snapshot time is random and announced in advance. This means there are no insider messages, no one can lay out plans in advance to inflate numbers, and everyone is on the same starting line.
Unlocking is on a random timetable, divided into four times, each time 25%. There is no unified unlocking date, and everyone's unlocking time points are staggered, structurally reducing the possibility of concentrated dumping.
Early block production nodes do not receive any rewards. First, stabilize the network, and then discuss incentives. This choice is rare in the crypto industry, which surprised me a bit.
Leaving a four-year remedial window for those who missed out, not creating a FOMO of 'missing out means it’s absolutely over.'
Each of these designs taken individually may not seem like much, but put together, it shows who the team is thinking of.
The third point that convinced me: it has a treasury that will become increasingly valuable.
This point took me quite a long time to understand.
For most chains, the treasury is just their own tokens. A wealthy treasury actually means that there are many of their own tokens on the books. Once a bear market hits, the book value shrinks, and the treasury's "reserves" are actually of little use.
Once Midnight's capacity market matures, users can use ETH, BNB, USDC, or even fiat stablecoins to purchase usage rights on the Midnight network. For each of these transactions, the protocol layer will charge a certain percentage and deposit it into the on-chain treasury.
This means that Midnight's treasury will gradually accumulate truly diversified assets—not just NIGHT, but also real value assets from other chains.
Then I thought of something: holders of $NIGHT governance have voting rights over this treasury.
This makes the meaning of holding NIGHT richer than I initially thought—you are not just holding a tool to generate DUST, you are also holding governance rights over a continuously growing diversified asset pool.
The more diverse the assets in the treasury, the more substantial the actual value of the governance rights. And the growth of the treasury happens automatically every time the network is used, without relying on any additional narratives.
What I am truly worried about
I don't want to just say good things; I want to talk about where my real concerns lie.
The first concern is time. Infrastructure projects often take longer than expected to go from technological maturity to widespread adoption. Midnight is still under construction, and true large-scale application may take two to three years or even longer to materialize. During this time, I have no idea how the price of $NIGHT will move, and no one knows.
The second concern is competition. The blockchain industry is developing rapidly, and other projects are also working in similar directions. Midnight currently has a first-mover advantage, but being first does not equal ultimate victory. Technology will be caught up, and competition in ecosystems is far more complex than technological competition.
The third concern is execution risk. No matter how good a project's roadmap looks, the difficulties in execution often exceed expectations. Midnight has considerable technical ambitions, and actually building these things and ensuring stable operation is no small task.
However, these three concerns, compared to most similar projects I've seen, are not unique to Midnight. Most projects have these problems, but they don't even have the basic logic to support long-term holding—Midnight at least has that.
My final judgment
I am not telling you that you should buy $NIGHT. Everyone's situation is different, their risk tolerance is different, and their judgment of this industry is different.
What I’m saying is just my own thought process: someone who remains highly vigilant in the crypto industry, after spending time researching seriously, believes that Midnight is one of the few projects that can be coherent in terms of technical logic, token economics, and distribution fairness.
This does not mean it will definitely succeed. But in an industry where most projects can’t even make sense of their internal logic, being coherent is already a relatively rare attribute.
Then it’s just waiting for time to provide the answer.
