I was shocked by the "transaction fees can also reveal habits" and turned back to seriously look at Midnight
Last night, a friend sent me a screenshot, saying he had only done a few ordinary interactions, but someone inferred "what application you are probably using" from the transaction fees and time points. To be honest, I felt a bit of a chill down my spine at that moment. Many people think privacy is only related to content, but the reality is harsher; behavioral trajectories are often hidden in the most transparent layer: when you pay, how much you paid, how frequent it is, all of these are like fingerprints.
I went to investigate the design of @MidnightNetwork based on this clue and found that it treats the "fuel cost layer" as part of privacy. Its approach is not to turn NIGHT into a privacy coin, but to separate the value layer from the usage layer. NIGHT is open and transparent, more about governance and value. What is actually used for transactions and contracts is the DUST generated by holding NIGHT. DUST cannot be transferred and will decay, more like an execution resource rather than an asset for transferring and trading. This boundary is very rigid, at least mechanism-wise, it tells you: privacy serves data and computation, not anonymous transportation of value.
I looked at the market data; the current price of NIGHT is about $0.047, circulating approximately 16.61 billion pieces, total supply of 24 billion pieces, market value about $780 million, and 24-hour transaction volume is around $1.1 billion level. The popularity is not low, but retail investors are most afraid of treating popularity as a necessity.
I acknowledge the advantages: it incorporates the fee layer, which is most prone to leaks, into the design thinking. The disadvantages are also real: no matter how good the mechanism is, if the generation and consumption of DUST in the wallet are not clearly displayed, newcomers will find it troublesome, and trouble will lead to abandonment. For us small investors, I would rather see "seamless usage" first, instead of hearing more grand narratives. Do you think the more difficult aspect of on-chain privacy is content, or behavior and payment habits?