As blockchain know-how matures, the trade faces a important problem: balancing transparency with privateness. Most public blockchains expose all transaction information, creating dangers for enterprises and people. This stress has sparked debate about whether or not decentralization should sacrifice confidentiality.
Fahmi Syed, President of the Midnight Basis, believes there’s a greater path ahead. Throughout Token2049 Singapore on the essential occasion venue, he outlined to BeInCrypto Midnight’s imaginative and prescient for “rational privateness.” Midnight’s strategy makes use of zero-knowledge-proofs-based sensible contracts to unlock selective disclosure: the power to regulate what you share, when, and with whom.
Please briefly clarify Midnight Network and the way it differs from different privacy-focused blockchains.
Midnight is a brand new layer one blockchain constructed on developments in zero-knowledge proofs. We’ve constructed a dual-state, public-and-private ledger structure that permits functions to validate delicate information utilizing cryptographic proofs.
By way of zero-knowledge proofs and purpose-built sensible contract disclosure mechanisms, people, firms, and machines can resolve what they share, once they share it, and with whom they share it. That is what we name “rational privateness”—selective, programmable privateness that protects delicate information by default whereas nonetheless enabling compliance and auditability when required.
Right now, most public blockchains are clear or pseudo-anonymous, however pseudo-anonymity shouldn’t be privateness – over time, identities and wallets may be uncovered, tracked, or compromised.
How does your strategy differ from earlier makes an attempt so as to add privateness to public blockchains?
Public ZK chains began with the likes of Monero and Zcash. These privacy-focused networks showcased how zero-knowledge proofs may defend delicate information, however as a result of their tokens acted as shops of worth, they raised compliance issues for not solely regulators, however corporates who should adhere to KYC/KYB procedures.
The following evolution was the rise in ZK rollups or ZK chains, which primarily aimed to scale blockchain transactions and later included some privateness options. However if you attempt to retrofit privateness, there’s at all times a danger of publicity.
At Midnight, we’ve baked privateness into the core of the community, providing you with the power to guard delicate information and metadata whereas remaining auditable on-chain. This basically lets you construct know-how and functions that protect privateness with out sacrificing compliance.
What’s Midnight’s mechanism that permits each privateness and compliance?
Personal information shouldn’t sit on a blockchain. Probably the most worthwhile use of personal information is when worth may be derived whereas the underlying info stays below the proprietor’s unique management. A technique this may occur is by way of proofs and attestations. For instance, proofs of identification, possession, or accreditation. These proofs operate like keys that gateway your entry into deeper ranges of a product, service or community.
Right now, worthwhile information sits in silos, fully underutilised. What Midnight can do is carry such silos collectively to unlock shared worth, with out danger of publicity. As a substitute of sharing uncooked information throughout networks, you possibly can present attestations, or proofs that allow untrusted events to function collectively in a trusted method. On this means, I see Midnight as a fact layer, by way of our sensible contracts, you possibly can enable disclosures or allow completely different events to validate info with out danger.
With Midnight, you get to decide on what, when, and with whom you’re disclosing info to. Individuals typically consider privateness as attempting to obfuscate or defend. We imagine privateness is a beginning place for compliance. Privateness with selective disclosure will allow higher compliance.
Midnight makes use of a dual-component tokenomics system with NIGHT and DUST. What motivated this design alternative, and the way does it tackle the financial challenges dealing with different Layer-1 blockchains?
The financial mannequin immediately for many blockchains shouldn’t be solely complicated, it’s damaged. For instance, you might have a Samsung telephone, however you don’t pay on your Samsung telephone along with your Samsung shares. Why? As a result of your shares are an funding, your telephone is only a product that you simply use, or “eat”.
Right now in Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, and different L1s, the tokens you choose for funding functions are the identical property you utilize to pay for transaction charges or “gasoline”. That is counterintuitive – for instance, what occurs when the token worth goes up in worth? Transaction prices improve, particularly during times of community congestion, which means you’re cannibalizing your funding simply to make a transaction, basically grinding the community to a halt.
At Midnight, we’ve separated possession and utility from consumption. NIGHT is our native utility token that offers you possession and governance of Midnight. NIGHT generates DUST, which is a renewable, shielded useful resource. DUST doesn’t operate as a retailer of worth, because it decays inside seven days. As a substitute of paying for transactions with NIGHT, you pay with DUST, and in case you personal NIGHT, your provide of DUST will proceed to replenish. This mannequin ensures you’re not cannibalising your major asset simply to pay to make use of the community.
The Glacier Drop has attracted important consideration locally. Are you able to share its essential targets and the way it helps Midnight’s imaginative and prescient?
We’re so assured in our know-how and its capabilities that we’re gifting away one hundred pc of the token provide of NIGHT by way of a multi-phase distribution course of, beginning with the Glacier Drop, which is open to customers from throughout eight main blockchain ecosystems. If you happen to have been holding no less than $100 value of BTC, ETH, ADA, SOL, AVAX, BNB, XRP, or BAT tokens in a self-custody pockets on the snapshot date, you might be eligible to come back and declare. The quantity of NIGHT you possibly can declare corresponds to your possession within the different eligible chains. The extra you could have there, the extra NIGHT you’ll obtain. Contributors from every of those ecosystems have the chance to come back and declare earlier than we open this as much as anybody throughout the Scavenger Mine section.
Scavenger Mine permits anyone from any ecosystem or stroll of life to assert a portion of the unclaimed tokens from Glacier Drop. Solely after the tip of Scavenger Mine is there a distribution to the Midnight Basis, the on-chain treasury, and the on-chain reserves.
You lately introduced a collaboration with Google Cloud. How does this partnership advance Midnight’s enterprise adoption objectives, and what does it imply for bringing conventional Web2 firms into the blockchain area?
That’s proper, our collaboration with Google Cloud is bringing enterprise-grade infrastructure help to our community, which can give establishments and others extra confidence to make the most of Midnight’s privacy-enhancing infrastructure. By way of this partnership and others, hundreds of thousands of customers and hundreds of company purchasers are welcome to make the most of Midnight’s know-how to carry enhanced privateness performance to their services and products.
Are you able to elaborate on this partnership with a real-world instance?
A healthcare firm in Turkey with three million sufferers is presently working with us to discover how they’ll leverage blockchain infrastructure to generate proofs of their sufferers’ medical histories. Our technique is to start out with companions with barely decrease regulatory hurdles for proof of idea. As soon as we will show viability in a single space, we will prolong it to a different. For instance, now we’re in conversations with a big hospital in California that’s wanting to make use of Midnight for cross-clinical trials with different exterior companions. They wish to defend delicate affected person information, in order that they’re how Midnight can carry collectively completely different silos of medical historical past and data to attain higher outcomes for his or her sufferers and the medical trade as an entire, with out ever exposing the information on the chain.
Are you able to stroll us by way of Midnight’s roadmap from testnet to mainnet launch? What are the first milestones and objectives for the remainder of 2025 and past?
Our major purpose for this yr is to finish Glacier Drop efficiently, launch our token, in addition to getting ready for mainnet launch. From there, our focus will likely be on how we carry our know-how to market whereas nonetheless sustaining our path to decentralization. To construct institutional confidence, our technique is to launch with a consortium of federated nodes, made up of ten trusted companions working validators, to supply the robustness, pace, and scalability that’s wanted for enterprises to function securely and confidently.
As we scale, by way of function releases, upgrades, and with companions bringing in additional transactional quantity, Midnight will progressively develop right into a decentralized ecosystem. To help this, after we launch on mainnet, we’ll be working an incentivized testnet in parallel to the federated mainnet. Finally, the 2 will converge, and we’ll find yourself with a completely decentralized blockchain the place validation is not only from trusted companions, however from a wider group of 100 to 200 validators.