I assumed the privacy problem in crypto was already solved.
we have privacy coins. If someone wants to stay anonymous or hide transactions, there are entire chains built specifically for that and It felt like a closed topic.
But that assumption started to break once I thought about how blockchain might actually be used outside of crypto environments.
Privacy isn’t always about hiding everything.
We have framed a different meaning of Privacy, most privacy focused systems take a very direct approach
sender and receiver become anonymous also the transaction itself. That model works well in situations where anonymity is the only goal.
The problem is many real world systems don't actually want full anonymity but selective Privacy..
In areas like regulated finance or healthcare, participants are often required to prove specific things. Not everything but just enough.
Whether they’re eligible to access a product, whether they meet compliance requirements, or whether they operate within a certain jurisdiction.
You can't do that on a fully private system. You end up with two extremes
You either reveal everything or stay hidden/anonymous.
There' was not really a clean middle ground untill I found @MidnightNetwork
What stood out to me is that it’s not trying to hide everything. It’s approaching privacy from a different angle, focusing on selective disclosure rather than complete invisibility.
The idea is to prove what matters without exposing the underlying data and That shift feels subtle at first, but it changes how you think about privacy entirely.
Because when you look at how real systems operate, they aren’t built on extremes. They function in layers. Some information is shared, some is protected, and some is only revealed when necessary.