I basically open the browser's incognito mode every day. It's not that I’m doing anything shameful, I just don’t want my browsing history to be messy; searching for flight prices is worrying about big data killing familiarity, and looking up symptoms doesn’t want precise insurance ads pushed to me.
These things are essentially privacy tools, and almost everyone is using them; it’s just that people don’t consider them a serious concept for discussion.
But on the blockchain side, it’s the opposite. Every transaction you make, every token you hold, and which contracts you have interacted with are all publicly transparent, and anyone can check. Although wallet addresses are anonymous, once linked to an exchange account, it is basically equivalent to real-name identification.
I previously participated in Scavenger Mine and got a bit.$NIGHT , and I idled for several cycles.
@MidnightNetwork Midnight's goal is to add a layer of privacy on the chain, using ZK zero-knowledge proofs to allow you to prove that you have done something without exposing specific details. Transfers can be verified but the amount remains unseen, identities can be authenticated but the information is not disclosed.
Does this demand exist? I believe it does.
To give a specific example. When you borrow and lend in DeFi, how much assets you have collateralized and the size of your position are all transparent on the chain.
If your position is significant enough that someone is specifically monitoring your wallet, waiting for you to be liquidated and then coordinating a dump, this kind of thing is not unusual on-chain. If position information is private, and only the protocol itself can see it, such targeted attacks cannot be executed.
For example, companies paying salaries. If a company pays employees with on-chain stablecoins, the salary amount for each person is transparent on the chain, which is unacceptable in any normal company. Privacy transactions allow the transfer to be completed without the amount being visible, making this scenario feasible.
The problem is that the demand for on-chain privacy is still in a "should have" rather than a "must have" state; most people's operations on the chain are not significant enough to require dedicated privacy protection.
Retail investors buying a few hundred U's worth of coins, no one is watching you. The ones who really need privacy are big players, institutions, and companies, but these people currently prefer centralized solutions to solve privacy issues rather than going for a brand new privacy chain.
Midnight's federal mainnet has just launched, with nodes operated by institutions, and DApps are still at zero. The road from technical demo to actual usage is not short.
But this direction is the same as our daily use of incognito mode and VPNs; privacy is not because there are secrets, but because not all information should be seen by everyone.
#night Around $0.047 has dropped significantly from its peak, and market sentiment is relatively cold. However, the privacy sector itself is a long-term matter and cannot be judged by short-term fluctuations. Whether you can wait for the day when Midnight truly operates depends on how long you can wait.
Personal opinion, not investment advice.