The Privacy Battle Heats Up
Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, recently made some interesting comments about why they created Midnight, their privacy-focused sidechain. It seems he was responding to some pretty concerning developments coming out of Europe.
Apparently, there’s been some discussion at the European Union level about potentially ending online anonymity. Hoskinson was specifically reacting to a viral post from political commentator Jim Ferguson, who was criticizing Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s comments at the World Economic Forum. Ferguson warned that this could lead to what he called a “digital surveillance grid” where every online action gets tied back to your real identity.
Midnight’s Purpose
Hoskinson positioned Midnight as a direct response to these potential threats. I think he sees it as a way to give people back some control over their digital lives. Midnight is designed to let people transact privately while still being able to comply with regulations when absolutely necessary.
The way he put it was pretty striking – he told people “not let the vampires in,” which I take to mean don’t let institutions and governments have unlimited access to your personal information. That’s strong language, but it shows how seriously he takes this privacy issue.
Project Progress
Midnight has been in development since November 2022, and they’ve made some decent progress. They had their first token distribution phase back in August called Glacier Drop, where eligible users across eight different blockchains could claim their share of 24 billion NIGHT tokens.
Right now, they’re running the second phase called Scavenger Mine, which lets people earn unclaimed tokens by completing computational tasks. It’s an interesting approach to distribution, though I’m not entirely sure how well it’s working in practice.
What’s Next
Everyone’s looking toward the Midnight Summit happening November 17-19. There’s a lot of speculation that they might reveal the final roadmap for the mainnet launch there. Some people are optimistic that we could see the privacy sidechain go live before the end of the year.
I have to wonder though – with all the regulatory pressure around privacy coins and anonymous transactions, how will Midnight navigate that landscape? Hoskinson seems confident they can balance privacy with compliance, but that’s always a tricky line to walk in this space.
The timing of all this is interesting too. With the EU considering these anonymity restrictions, having a privacy solution ready to go could position Cardano well if those policies actually get implemented. But we’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.
