I've seen many people talk about zero-knowledge proofs or rational privacy, but in my opinion the DUST resource model is actually one of the most unique parts of Midnight.

Midnight doesn’t use normal gas fees like Ethereum. Instead, it has a dual-token system: one of the tokens is $NIGHT , the native governance token, and the other one is DUST, a private resource used to execute transactions and smart contracts, our main topic.

The unusual part about DUST is that it's non-transferable, and it is generated from holding NIGHT tokens. It decays or replenishes over time depending on how much NIGHT you hold, so instead of paying gas each time, your network capacity depends on your stake.

Token-based network bandwidth has huge implications, such as spam resistance, predictable fees, and long-term alignment.

You must be questioning why DUST is non-transferable, right? Let me explain. If DUST were transferable, people would buy and sell it, making it volatile, and it would make it easier to manipulate the fees, but by making it non-transferable, it stays a pure resource!

It also prevents network spam attacks; to attack the network, one must:

1- buy #Night

2- Hold it long enough.

3- generate DUST

That makes attacks a very expensive and time-consuming process.

@MidnightNetwork might be the first major blockchain where transaction capacity behaves like bandwidth, not gas.