Yesterday, the news of Zhang Xuefeng's sudden passing went viral. This teacher, who dedicated his life to planning the future for young people, often said one thing during his life: “Your information is your life.”
Teacher Zhang, safe travels!!
Ironically, at the moment he fell, his health data, travel trajectory, medical records, and even his final vital signs—were all silently recorded by centralized servers, becoming a few lines of code in some big corporation's database. He desperately helped others plan their lives but could not plan the final ownership of his own data.
This precisely answers the question that @MidnightNetwork is raising.
In the traditional internet, data has never belonged to you. Your health records belong to hospitals, consumption habits belong to e-commerce platforms, and chat content belongs to social giants. You only have “usage rights,” not “ownership.” However, Midnight Network uses zero-knowledge proof technology to allow “owning data” and “using data” to coexist for the first time.
What does this mean? It’s like when Zhang Xuefeng consulted students—he needed to understand their family background, academic performance, and personality traits to give precise advice. But if this information must all be public, who would dare to seek advice? Midnight Network’s ZK technology allows you to “prove” to the other party that you meet a certain condition without revealing specific information. Just like you only need to show the result of “over 18 years old” without disclosing your ID number to the public.
Zhang Xuefeng spent his life teaching people to “see the reality,” while Midnight Network is building a reality where you can participate without having to “hand over your soul.”
Some say blockchain solves the “trust issue,” but Midnight Network addresses a more fundamental “sovereignty issue.” In an era where data equals power, those without data ownership are merely transparent individuals raised by algorithms.
Zhang Xuefeng is gone, but the question he raised remains: when you hand everything over to the system, what can you still retain?
The answer given by Midnight Network is—you can still retain “the right to choose.”