I’m really impressed 😅. Yesterday I went through the delivery list again, looking at that "transparent public blockchain" which hit a new historical low since the beginning of the year. It really doesn't feel good. At that time, I rushed in because of those four words "open and transparent", and what happened? The project party's wallet is cleaner than my face. Every day I watch them unlock and sell, and I feel like a stripped leek, with my underwear exposed and still having to count money for others. The on-chain transparency is indeed transparent, but our small investors' data and privacy are like running naked on the street, exposed for everyone to see.
But recently I researched something called @MidnightNetwork . This operation really made me laugh and also made me impressed.
It starts by not claiming to disrupt this or revolutionize that, but introduces a term called 'rational privacy'. What does it mean? It means this project is like an old hand who understands human relationships, not playing the binary management theory of 'either completely hidden or completely exposed' with you. It uses Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZK) technology to implement 'selective disclosure'. You can prove 'I have money', 'I am an adult', but just won’t show you the specific numbers and ID number.
In the past, those privacy projects always carried a hint of 'I want to do bad things', and when regulation comes, they all have to lay low. The brilliance of Midnight lies in leaving a 'compliant backdoor' for regulation—if you need to report taxes? Fine, just prove you've paid enough taxes, don't check my transactions. As the official documentation states, it sets privacy as the default option; if you want to disclose? You have to explicitly write it out in the code. This approach, which neither compromises nor ceases to exist, is true long-termism.
Moreover, the economic model of this project is quite savvy. It has two coins, NIGHT and DUST. To be honest, I've always felt there's a rather twisted aspect in existing L1s—when you buy one coin as an asset, that coin also has to be burned as Gas. When the price rises, the usage cost rises too, leading to fewer users. Midnight's design directly circumvents this issue.
NIGHT is like the shares of your mining machine in hand, holding it can give birth to 'children' (DUST). The one really paying the transaction fee is the DUST that will expire and cannot be traded. This means that as long as you hold NIGHT, your network usage costs are controllable, and you won't be squeezed out because of skyrocketing coin prices, nor will you have to worry about exposing your entire wallet's wealth due to a single transfer.
Recently, this project has been quite active. First, MoneyGram announced its support for its on-chain privacy infrastructure, and then Google Cloud also confirmed its participation in infrastructure support. Moreover, their Aliit Fellowship's second phase has also opened, specifically recruiting developers who really write code and create tools, not just those who shout slogans to gain popularity. What does this indicate? It indicates that this project genuinely wants to get things done, not just make empty promises.
Now the mainnet is set to launch at the end of March, holding the airdropped $NIGHT in hand, watching it unlock little by little, I really feel a bit at ease. In the world of Web3, our core user demand has never been cold technology, but the experience of being respected and protected.
Holding $NIGHT , backed by @MidnightNetwork , my friend no longer has to run naked on-chain.