The other day, some guys in the group asked a rather sharp question: What is this @MidnightNetwork really different from Monero or Zcash, or is it just a new bottle with old wine? It sounds simple, but I had to quickly dig through its documentation for a while before I felt confident enough to answer.
In my view, the first difference is not in the dry specifications, but in how it perceives what is called privacy.
You guys pay attention, the big players in the privacy chain have always played the all-or-nothing game. If it's private, it's completely hidden, from start to finish. Hidden transactions, hidden data, consider it all-or-nothing, no one sees anything at all. This method is great if you just want to hide transactions.
But life is not a dream, when dealing with large systems like banks or corporations, the story changes immediately. They need to hide customer data, okay, but they still have to report and present to prove that they are complying with the law. If everything is hidden, who would believe it, who would allow it?
So the guy Midnight jumped out to play a slightly different move, called selective disclosure. It sounds fancy, but in reality, these guys just need to prove a fact about the data without having to expose all that data for the whole world to see.
As for the guts - meaning the architecture - I find it a mix of everything. Transactions use the UTXO model, but smart contracts play the account model. The public states still reside on the chain for everyone to verify, while private states are kept on your own machine.
One detail I find quite interesting is the fee mechanism. It uses the NIGHT token to create DUST, then takes that DUST as transaction fees. Hearing it this way, it seems like it wants to separate the network's operational part from the price fluctuations of the token, reducing the impact.
To be honest, I still don't know if this design approach will make a difference, becoming a new standard or not. But at least it shows that this guy is looking at privacy from a more realistic, practical perspective rather than being lofty like previous models.
$NIGHT #night @MidnightNetwork
