One thing I’ve noticed in crypto is that building privacy-first apps usually requires a PhD in cryptography. If you want to use zero-knowledge proofs, you normally have to deal with some pretty intense math. @MidnightNetwork is trying to change that with a new language they call Compact.
Compact. What's that?
I was digging into the developer side of the whitepaper, and it’s a relief. Usually, to make a transaction private, a developer has to manually build a circuit, which is a complex logic map for the proof. With Compact, it feels more like writing regular TypeScript.
The way @MidnightNetwork set this up is clever. You write your logic in Compact, and the network handles the heavy lifting of turning that into a zero-knowledge proof. This means a regular web developer could build a private voting system or a confidential supply chain app without needing to understand the underlying polynomial equations.
Then what's the role of NIGHT token Here?
The $NIGHT token plays a role here because it powers the infrastructure that these Compact-based apps run on. If it's easy for devs to build, we get more apps. If we get more apps, the value of the network grows.
The biggest barrier to blockchain adoption isn't just gas fees or speed. It is how hard it is to build useful things. If @MidnightNetwork pulls off making ZK-proofs accessible to the average coder, we are going to see a wave of data protection apps that we couldn't imagine before.
I’m starting to see the full picture now. Tomorrow we will look at how they handle regulation-friendly privacy because that's where most projects failed.