Alright, let's be a little frank.
We all scream on every corner about blockchain as the best solution for building trust. Decentralization. Transparency. I'm sure you are all aware. Sounds incredible, right?
But at some point, you, like me, will realize that everything, absolutely everything, that you do on most blockchains usually remains public in that blockchain forever.
And this is not a trifle, it is actually important!
All your transactions are visible and public. Your wallet balance is visible and public. Your smart contracts and your interactions with them are public. And if you think that your certain level of anonymity on the blockchain equates to privacy, then you are very, very mistaken. Anyone using blockchain analytics tools can find any information about you in 5 minutes.
And this is not a joke.
This is the problem that @MidnightNetwork is trying to solve, and, as it seems to me, quite successfully.
Imagine that you are the owner of a hospital, and you are publishing patients' medical histories on a public blockchain. Or you are trading goods, and all your competitors see all your contracts in real time. Sounds like nonsense, right? But, when comparing business logic with blockchain, this is roughly how it looks.
Here comes Midnight Network onto the scene.
The project team looked at blockchain and said: "Okay, why should a user choose between decentralization and privacy? Why can't we combine both?".
Here is where Midnight was built based on zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs). And they are not some kind of addition here. They are the foundation and basis of the project.
The idea is simple: you can prove something without revealing the actual data behind that something.
Sounds not scary, right?
Example: you can prove that you are over 21 years old without stating your date of birth.
Or prove that you have enough money without showing the full balance of your wallet.
And this is actually a powerful idea. A quiet, yet powerful impetus for change in blockchain logic.
The public blockchain tells you: "Show us everything so we can verify it."
Midnight says: "Prove it mathematically, and your information will remain a secret.
And this is important because it actually changes the game.
It is important to note that, in this case, Midnight is not a fully anonymous network, which would contradict the regulatory rules of some countries. It employs principles of selective disclosure and rational privacy. And this is, in fact, very practical.
You decide what information to disclose and to whom.
The user can verify their compliance with certain requirements without disclosing personal data.
This is called controlled visibility.
For these purposes, Midnight has 2 levels.
The public part that handles consensus and on which network governance occurs and where you will need the token $NIGHT that provides public transactions.
A private environment where the execution of smart contracts takes place and private information is stored. The private environment exists off-chain and everything is stored on your device.
For the private environment, you will need a second network token - Dust. It is responsible for transaction payments and smart contracts.
Where to get Dust? It's simple - hold #night and it will automatically generate Dust for you.
Dust is a secure and non-transferable token, so it’s only yours by default.
And it works. It really works.
Many networks that operate on a single token mix everything into a heap - network governance, transaction payments, speculative value of the token, and then the volatility of the coin causes chaos in the network.
Midnight has overcome this problem by separating the economically valuable token from the token that is responsible for transactions within.
And it is a kind of elegant and brilliant solution. Period.
In the coming days, the mainnet of the project is set to launch and we will see how it all works in a real environment.
In an environment where privacy is not some kind of bonus or gift, but is a feature by default.
In an environment where the security of your data is standard.
The time for this has long come.
We will see now if it succeeds, but finally someone has stated this and is starting to build the infrastructure of privacy.
