When it comes to public chains, apart from congestion, the most headache-inducing issue is the soaring and plummeting Gas fees.

Do you remember during the last bull market, the transaction fee for a single transfer was enough for a meal.

This kind of volatility not only deters users but also makes it difficult for DApp developers to estimate costs.

Recently, while studying the token economic model of @MidnightNetwork , it was found that to address this issue, they designed a clever 'dual-token' system, centered around $NIGHT and $DUST.

In simple terms, $NIGHT is like your 'asset principal' and 'voting rights':

Holding $NIGHT can be staked to validation nodes (including Cardano's SPO) to protect network security and can also participate in future governance votes.

Its total supply is a constant 24 billion and has value storage properties.

But what's really interesting is $DUST.

You can think of it as the 'call duration' or 'battery life' on your phone — as long as you hold $NIGHT, the system will automatically 'generate' $DUST for you like earning interest.

When you trade on the Midnight chain or run smart contracts, what you actually consume is $DUST, not directly burning $NIGHT.

There are several obvious benefits to this:

1. Predictable fees:

$DUST is not for speculation; it cannot be transferred or traded, which isolates transaction fees from market speculation.

No matter how the $NIGHT price fluctuates, the cost of paying with $DUST remains relatively stable.

2. Smoother experience:

The most considerate design is that you can delegate the $DUST you generate to developers.

What does this mean?

It means that when you use a certain DApp, the project can help you 'cover' the gas fee.

New users no longer need to purchase gas tokens to experience this, which is an important step towards mass adoption.

3. Anti-witch attack:

$DUST has a time decay mechanism and cannot be transferred, which greatly prevents bots from exploiting or maliciously spamming the network.

This design that separates 'capital value' ($NIGHT) and 'resource usage rights' ($DUST) reminds me that if Ethereum had a similar design in its early days, the debate over EIP-1559 might not have been so intense.

Midnight has rethought the issue of 'payment' from the ground up.

In addition, their Glacier Drop event was quite conscientious, distributing tokens to millions of people in communities like BTC, ETH, ADA, rather than just selling to VCs.

This situation of 'relatively dispersed chips' is undoubtedly good for the healthy development of the ecosystem after the mainnet launch.

After all, everyone has experienced the days of being cut by low liquidity, high FDV projects; a starting method like $NIGHT actually feels more solid. #night