The Aliit is Midnight’s selective technical fellowship program, which was created to recognize and empower the builders who embody what a privacy-first ecosystem demands: depth, rigor, and the generosity in sharing knowledge about new technology. This group serves as an extension of the Midnight Foundation team, contributing to the evolution of Midnight through hands-on building, testing, technical content creation, and community mentorship.
In Web3 ecosystems, fellowships designate small, highly selective groups of builders who influence protocol direction and developer experience. The Aliit follows that tradition, focused on depth rather than scale.
In Mandalorian, Aliit means “family” or “clan”, and this inaugural class reflects exactly that: a global network of developers who were already experimenting, teaching, creating examples, launching workshops, winning hackathons, and onboarding new builders long before this Fellowship existed.
Because Midnight is still early in its lifecycle, developers with hands-on experience in Compact, ZK workflows, and private computation are rare. This cohort reflects the small but growing set of builders capable of shaping the network’s foundations.
This Fellowship is distinct from Midnight’s newly launched community ambassador program, which focuses on broad outreach and visibility. The Aliit remains a technically rigorous group shaping Midnight’s evolution at an engineering level.
This first cohort spans 11 countries and includes founders, product designers, open-source maintainers, educators, mobile engineers, zero-knowledge researchers, and long-time community stewards. They represent the breadth of what it means to build privately, publicly, and with purpose.
Meet the Fellows in the inaugural Cohort 0 of the Aliit.
Tainá Bugs — Brazil
Tainá has been part of the Midnight ecosystem since its earliest days, bringing deep experience from Cardano and a track record of shaping real products at Edda Labs. Her background blends product design, UX, and smart contract development with hands-on work across DeFi, governance, and zero-knowledge proof systems. She has participated in four Midnight hackathons, winning first- and second-place prizes with projects such as zk bulletin boards, private voting prototypes, battleship games, and privacy-preserving auctions.
Her past work as a product owner on two Midnight Foundation–funded RWA and sustainability projects, and her commitment to producing clear video tutorials and workshops for developers across LATAM and Asia. Her clarity, execution, and global reach made her an essential member of this inaugural cohort, and her voice will help guide new builders entering the ecosystem.
Kaleab Gizaw — Türkiye
Kaleab is a blockchain developer who has embraced zero-knowledge research and Midnight development with remarkable focus over the past year. He created create-midnight-app, a developer-friendly npm package, built Midnight Playground, an online IDE for Compact, and authored zkVote, a zk voting platform using Midnight’s privacy primitives. His background includes managing blockchain staking interfaces and infrastructure work within the Cosmos ecosystem, as well as active involvement in the Istanbul Technical University Blockchain Club and Moda Palas.
He runs workshops, speaks at local events, and collaborates with other Fellows to build shared resources. His momentum, public learning, and drive to create open tools exemplify exactly what this first cohort represents.
Ahmed Amine Gargoura — Germany
Ahmed is the founder of CarthageX Labs and a senior System Engineer with over a decade of experience, now dedicated to pioneering privacy-enhancing Web3 solutions within the Midnight ecosystem. His focus areas include ZK-based identity and robust developer tooling. He is the architect of zkTanitID, a decentralized identity layer on Midnight, and operates the CarthageX Labs Stake Pool.
Strategically, Ahmed Amine plans to launch a “Privacy Builders Workshop Series & Educational Content” across Europe and North Africa. This initiative is designed to bridge regional academic talent directly to Midnight development, making him a foundational educator and key connector for the platform across multiple continents.
Eme Jay — Canada
EME is a developer and community contributor with hands-on experience maintaining repositories under Midnight Scripts and building foundational infrastructure such as pool directories and analytics tools.
He is active across Reddit, Discord, and YouTube, and one of his goals is to run weekly Twitter Spaces to onboard new developers and unify the community. His contributions span multiple chains, including Cardano tools like poolinfo. His straightforward, steady contribution style and commitment to running educational spaces adds a valuable communication layer to this cohort.
Honorat Kablansi — Côte d’Ivoire
Honorat is an emerging engineer with experience in Rust, TypeScript, Python, and Go, focused on developing DApp examples and increasing Midnight's visibility in West Africa. He has begun experimenting with Compact through early projects like battleX, and expressed a strong interest in building example code, improving documentation, and helping developers understand the architecture through consistent small contributions.
His education and growth in a region where blockchain understanding is often limited, and privacy tooling is especially needed. Honorat’s commitment to steady, hands-on work and to creating a local foothold for Midnight made him a strong addition to this inaugural class.
Sergey Kisel — Switzerland
Sergey is a co-founder and CTO of Brick Towers and one of the ecosystem’s strongest builders, with multiple award-winning Midnight hackathon projects that demonstrate practical applications of ZK for gaming and identity. His team’s wins span the SeaBattle and ZK Identity events and, most recently, the Midnight Summit Hackathon, underscoring his consistency as a top technical contributor. He has already helped strengthen the ecosystem through contributions to urble, a privacy-preserving savings app built on Midnight, and improvements to community tooling, including a fixed version of the midnight-proof-server.
As part of the Aliit, Sergey will take that momentum into more structured leadership: supporting new builders as they navigate Compact, bringing deeper ZK-applied patterns into the community, and helping us raise the bar on open-source examples and troubleshooting guides. His habit of presenting Midnight across Europe and stepping in to help developers in Discord will now expand into a clearer role in shaping how the next wave of builders learn, prototype, and ship.
Luis Lucena — Spain
Luis is a senior full-stack blockchain engineer with experience across Rust, Python, TypeScript, Java, and Solidity. He has led the development of production-grade smart contracts, multi-chain infrastructure, validator operations, and secure architectures for DeFi, RWA, and gaming projects across both EVM and non-EVM ecosystems. Luis is also part of Chainlink’s Developer Experts network, where he teaches workshops and mentors builders.
Within Midnight, Luis focuses on developer tooling that reduces friction and clarifies real Compact patterns, especially around testing and local workflows. He consistently translates complex concepts into approachable learning resources, something our community has relied on as Compact evolves. His engineering discipline and community-first approach make him a high-impact addition to this first cohort.
Norman Lopez — United States
Norman has one of the deepest Midnight resumes in the entire ecosystem, spanning mobile engineering, WASM integration research, payment systems, financial applications, developer tooling, and full-stack ZK experiments. His projects include zkSalaria, MidnightPay, midnight-bank, MidnightForge, MidnightMobile, and midnight-server-analytics, many of which won or placed in multiple hackathons. Norman’s application shows strong experience across Solana, Ethereum, Algorand, Chainlink, and NEAR, along with a track record of building polished interfaces that address real usability challenges.
Looking ahead, Norman will help push Midnight into areas where few ecosystems succeed, starting with mobile-first development and WASM-based integrations. He plans to expand Midnight’s presence in Latin America, support developers building real-world financial applications, and provide guidance on making ZK workflows more accessible. His relentless experimentation and ability to turn complex ideas into working prototypes make him a cornerstone for what this inaugural class will build next.
Sam Jeffrey — India
Sam is a hands-on engineer who has built solutions for enterprise and government clients using AI, blockchain, and privacy-first tooling. His work includes an interdepartmental privacy solution for Indian government forensics, the Nucast RegTech platform, and a Midnight ZK bridge prototype. He rated himself a 5 in both Compact and Web3 proficiency, supported by experience in Java, Go, Rust, Solidity, Python, and TypeScript. Through IndiaCodex, he has trained thousands of developers and helped place many into Cardano companies.
Sam’s mission as an Aliit is to onboard at least 100 Indian developers into Midnight, and to integrate Midnight with his existing enterprise networks. His blend of senior engineering and community-building expertise strengthens the technical foundation of this cohort.
Elliot Lucky — Nigeria
Elliot has been building on Midnight for nearly a year, contributing to DApps like Statera, FluidTokens, and FundAGoal, and participating in multiple hackathons across the ecosystem. His background spans TypeScript and ZK patterns, and he has developed a strong understanding of Compact and Midnight’s privacy architecture.
Elliot is the go-to Aliit in Nigeria for workshops, educational content, mentoring newcomers and. One of his goals is to expand Midnight adoption in Nigeria, where blockchain is often misunderstood. He brings a community-first mindset and a builder’s reliability. His consistency and clarity made him a standout member of this first cohort.
Stephanie Mellott — United States
Stephanie brings a deeply personal motivation to Midnight, rooted in lived experience with identity theft and a desire to help others protect their data. Over two years, she transformed herself from a non-developer into a privacy-focused builder, producing videos, tutorials, website content, and live streams that introduce Midnight concepts to a broader audience. She has participated in hackathons, organized community groups, and supported teams navigating XRPL, Evernode, and Cardano infrastructure.
She also comes to Web3 from a path that isn’t the typical one, drawing on her experience as a veteran and as someone who entered this space later in her career. Because of that, she naturally connects with people who feel outside the usual mold of crypto builders, including newcomers, career changers, and those who didn’t start with a traditional technical background. Her clarity, persistence, and impact through education make her a powerful storyteller for this inaugural class.
Jonathan Rodriguez — Canada
Jonathan is a senior blockchain engineer with deep experience in Cardano smart contracts, transaction tooling, and protocol-level design, and is now actively building with Compact and Midnight's privacy architecture. He is the creator of Lucid Evolution and its successor Evolution SDK (incubated by Intersect MBO), widely used transaction builder frameworks, and the author of CIP-128, an accepted Cardano Improvement Proposal that improves Plutus script efficiency. He is focused on producing practical, hands-on onboarding for developers transitioning into privacy-first systems, contributing directly to Midnight's open-source examples and publishing real learning paths that reflect how developers actually build.
Jonathan brings a builder-first, tooling-driven approach, and his ability to turn complex protocol mechanics into usable templates and examples made his inclusion in this inaugural Aliit cohort an easy call.
Erick Romero — Brazil
Erick is a senior builder, product advisor, educator, and MIP editor whose work spans multiple hackathons, Midnight partner projects, and educational initiatives across LATAM and Asia. At Edda Labs, he is a solutions advisor and product owner on two Midnight Foundation–funded RWA pilots, and he also collaborates closely with Mesh.js to develop templates, tooling, and documentation. Erick also hosts a weekly YouTube education series in three languages, extending Midnight’s reach to a global audience and reinforcing the learning loop for new developers. He has represented Midnight in Buenos Aires, Rio, and Vietnam, building a consistent educational footprint around privacy-first development.
Erick will be expanding workshops, creating educational materials, strengthening example dapps, and supporting businesses adopting Midnight through hands-on guidance. His cross-functional visibility and consistent leadership make him an anchor of this inaugural cohort.
John Santi — United States
John is a passionate privacy advocate and builder who has won four Midnight hackathons and was the first to bring decentralized identifiers into Midnight prototypes. His background includes early DID work, onboarding teams from Identus, and building educational pathways for new developers. He is active across the XRPL and Cardano communities, creates Midnight-focused YouTube content, and now works as a social media manager at Adastack while continuing to build on the network.
John plans to create onboarding content, run educational spaces, and bridge communities across ecosystems. His energy, loyalty, and commitment to spreading the message of privacy give this cohort a powerful community voice.
Andreas Sosilo — Germany
Andreas began building on Midnight during the Cardano Hackathon Berlin 2024, where he won the Midnight track in both 2024 and 2025. He operates a Midnight validator, contributes to Cardano governance as a DRep, and has been a Cardano Ambassador for four years, educating Indonesian developers and hosting community meetups. He recently launched the Indonesian Midnight Network Community on Telegram, creating a dedicated home for regional builders and early adopters.
His full plan is to expand this local ecosystem through regular online meetups, validator education, and localized content. Andreas brings a rare combination of governance literacy, technical curiosity, and community strategy. His experience with regional ecosystems and developer education made him a natural fit for this first cohort.
Utkarsh Varma — Canada
Utkarsh is a senior systems engineer leading the Midnight team at Webisoft, with strong experience in Cosmos SDK, EVM, Rust, Solana, Compact, AI/ML systems, and more. He built Web3fast.dev, a platform designed to accelerate Compact development through automation and AI tooling.
He has a desire to create a “build with me” YouTube series, help modernize the developer tooling experience, and support a more automated ecosystem around Midnight. His technical range and focus on scale-oriented tools make him an asset to this cohort.
Suzuki Taro — Japan
Suzuki is a technically versatile engineer with experience across Rust, TypeScript, Solidity, and C, and has been experimenting with private smart contract design, confidential transaction flows, and NFT/DeFi integrations using Midnight.
He is focused on creating high-quality tutorials, sample code, and real-world use cases such as private auctions and credential proofs. He has contributed to multiple ecosystems, run validator infrastructure, and supported development teams with security and environment setup. Suzuki brings a precise, methodical approach to problem-solving, and his commitment to creating polished open-source examples made his inclusion in this inaugural class clear.
What’s Next for the Aliit Fellows?
Cohort 0 represents 11 countries, 17 builders, and the first global network of developer-leaders advancing programmable privacy.
Over the next six months, they will:
- Represent Midnight at global hackathons
- Write technical blog posts and tutorials
- Host meetups and workshops in their local languages
- Translate educational materials
- Build starter templates, example DApps, and learning resources
- Mentor developers entering the ecosystem
- Strengthen our feedback loops with real insights from around the world
This growing Fellowship is the foundation of Midnight’s developer acquisition and activation strategy. Their work will create network effects that ripple across regions, languages, and technical communities, laying the groundwork for a global, privacy-first developer movement.
As Midnight approaches mainnet, the work of this Fellowship becomes even more critical: producing patterns, templates, and feedback loops that will guide thousands of future developers.
Cohort 0 is here. Cohort 1 is next. And together, they will help build the future of privacy.
Learn more about how to become eligible to apply for Cohort 1 here.