《A Token Without Team Reserve, Can You Believe It?》

A couple of days ago, I reviewed the airdrop data of Glacier with the number @MidnightNetwork and found an interesting detail. The total supply is 24 billion NIGHT tokens, with over 40% allocated to the community, covering users across 8 chains, and any unclaimed tokens after the claiming window expire are redistributed. The entire white paper shows that the team reserve section is empty.

Looking at this in 2026 seems quite magical. Just pick any new project, and the token distribution chart typically shows that the team and advisors eat up at least 20%, with VC rounds taking another 30%, leaving the community with nothing. Midnight does the opposite — alliance validators are backed by big names like Google Cloud and MoneyGram, yet the token distribution operates like a community experiment.

In fact, the core of the dual-token design lies in this logic. $NIGHT is responsible for capturing value, but it doesn't directly burn Gas; instead, it stakes to generate DUST. DUST is not tradable and can only be used for privacy transactions, and the more NIGHT you hold, the more DUST you generate daily. This approach completely separates speculation from usage — those who want to profit from token prices don't need to compete for Gas resources, and those who want to use the network don’t have to worry about skyrocketing costs.

Looking back at that airdrop rule, it might be the most honest part of the entire project. A privacy chain that first distributes chips to users at least indicates that it doesn't intend to make privacy a privilege for a select few. #night