Last winter, when the first snow fell in Hangzhou, I sat for half the night in my childhood friend's old Yang's rental room. The two of us looked at the snow outside the window, smoked nearly two packs of cigarettes, and complained about the nonsense of the new public chain's grand promises.
Old Yang has been doing on-chain development for 5 years and spent a full 3 months creating a lightweight wallet plugin for some celebrity new public chain that claims to be the 'Ethereum killer.' Before the mainnet launch, the official BD dragged him out for drinks every day and even treated me to two barbecues, thumping his chest and saying, 'This project is definitely the core of the ecosystem, and once it launches, you'll get top-tier exposure with a 200000 U ecosystem fund nailed down.'@MidnightNetwork
I totally understand this feeling; I fell into the same pit in 2024. At that time, I developed a batch minting tool for NFTs for a new L1 public chain, spent nearly a month on it, and before the mainnet launch, BD kept messaging me every day with small talk, saying they would connect me with official resources. However, on the day the mainnet went live, all support went to a few capital projects that had connections with the officials. I even got blocked by that BD on WeChat, and in the end, the tool didn't even earn back the server fees, and I was left with it.
After playing with coins for 7 years, I've seen too many farces of new public chains, all of which follow the same script: during the bull market, they raise a large sum of money, draw a big pie of 'overthrowing Ethereum', and when the mainnet goes live, they hype it up first, shouting '100 billion ecological support'. But after the mainnet goes live, aside from the wallets and block explorers that the officials themselves make, there's nothing useful left, a classic case of 'launching is like a ghost town.'
Oh right, back then I also impulsively jumped into EOS; at that time, the whole internet was hyping 'blockchain operating systems', raising 4 billion dollars. I put in a few tens of thousands, but after the mainnet launch, aside from 21 super nodes arguing over power, there wasn't even a usable application. The coin price dropped 90%, and the money I lost has not been recovered since. Since then, I understood that the '100 billion ecological support' shouted by new public chains is just a gimmick for raising funds, and very few truly support developers who are doing real work.
It was only later that I realized why these public chain ecosystems fail to develop is that they have completely reversed the order — they all follow 'launch the mainnet first, then look for an ecosystem', treating the mainnet launch as the finish line rather than the starting point. The mainnet isn't even stable yet, development tools aren't fully made, and support policies are just shadows, yet they rush to launch and hype it up to cut the leeks. Once the peak hype days pass, the developers' projects are still unfinished, users have long run away, support has turned yellow, and in the end, the ecosystem only has a few air projects from capital parties, slowly becoming a neglected zombie chain.
The most frustrating part is that even if you really spend months to complete a project, you still can’t get the support they brag about. Almost all ecological funds of public chains end up in the pockets of projects that have capital backing and connections with the officials, while individual developers and small teams like Lao Yang can't even add the officials' WeChat for connections, let alone any technical support or financial backing, just pure accompanying tools.#night
Also because I have been scammed too many times, when the GitHub repository tagging event by Midnight came out on March 6, my first reaction wasn't 'another gimmick for big promises', but to quickly send the link to Lao Yang.
First, to those brothers who haven't been following, let me be honest, this matter is not some decoration; it really opens a workable backdoor for small developers like us who have no background and no connections. The rules are ridiculously simple: as long as you are working on a project on Midnight, whether you're doing DeFi, tools, NFTs, AI agents, or just a small plugin, as long as you tag your GitHub repository with 'midnightntwrk' and add an official project description in your README, your project will be included in the official ecosystem list, and not only will it be counted in the developer reports of Electric Capital, but it can also directly enter the official support view.
In other words, the core of this action is that before the mainnet is launched, they actively find all developers working on the ecosystem. Whether you are a large team or a solo coder, whether your project is already formed or just started, as long as you are doing real work, you can be seen and get resources. This is completely the opposite of those public chains that only start looking for developers after the mainnet goes live.
Oh right, the most amazing part is that this tagging matter is not isolated; it is a coherent play with the previous Fellowship program and the on-chain treasury ecological funds. Projects that have tagged, as long as they have real development progress, can directly apply for Fellowship support, access treasury funds, and have one-on-one connections with the official technical team, even getting exposure from the official channels.
Now there is only 1 day left until the mainnet goes live. I checked GitHub and already over a hundred projects have tagged officially, some are working on DeFi protocols, some on prediction markets, some on privacy tools, and even some working on AI smart contract agents. In the developer channel of the official Discord, every day developers are showcasing their project progress, and the official technical staff directly provide solutions in the comments, even on weekends someone replies to messages. This kind of atmosphere, I really haven't seen in a new public chain for a long time.
Many people say, isn't it just tagging on GitHub? What's so impressive about it? But only those who have actually done development understand that for small developers like us, who have no capital and no connections, what we lack the most is not the ability to write code, but the opportunity to be seen — without having to kneel and lick capital, without having to give rebates to big players, as long as we do our projects well, we can get support and recognition.
Of course, I'm not saying this is perfect. When I was browsing GitHub, I also saw a few empty repositories with tags, no code changes, not even a copied README, which made me worry whether it would still become a game for big teams in the end? After all, even if small developers get tagged, will they still be able to compete with large projects backed by capital? However, the officials also mentioned in the group that they would check the real submission history of each project one by one, and that just tagging won't be enough to gain support, which was somewhat reassuring.
Previously, Lao Yang told me that after so many years of development, the most disheartening thing is not that the project cannot be completed, but that after you spent months working on something, the officials don’t even look at it, and all resources go to those capital projects that only shout slogans. This time, he also set up his own repository on GitHub, tagged it officially, and created a privacy transaction accounting tool for Midnight. The official technical staff has already connected with him, providing him with a full set of testnet resources and an application channel for the Fellowship program.
I don't want to shout some industry jargon like 'reconstructing public chain cold starts', it just sounds annoying, nor do I want to predict how many times the coin price will surge after the mainnet goes live, that's all empty talk. I just recognize one thing, whether a public chain can survive is not determined by how high the coin price goes, but whether it really leaves a way out for developers who are doing real work, rather than giving everything to capital as a wedding dress.
Yesterday, Lao Yang sent me the beta version of his project, saying that the formal version would be ready on the day the mainnet goes live. He said this time he finally doesn't have to accompany BD to drink and boast, and can focus on writing code. I also starred his repository, just waiting for the mainnet to go live to see how useful this accounting tool he made is.$NIGHT
