Announcements at Consensus Toronto marked a pivotal step in Midnight’s evolution. The launch of the Midnight Foundation and Shielded Technologies laid the groundwork for long-term governance, decentralization, and technical delivery, while conversations throughout the event made clear: it’s time to break free from systems that force us to choose between utility and privacy.
Break free: blockchain building for the real world
A recurring theme surrounding Midnight at Consensus Toronto was that it’s time to Break Free. This doubled down on the growing recognition that blockchain must evolve to meet real-world demands.
Blockchain began as a breakthrough technology, but early implementations prioritized transparency over privacy. These innovations were designed for visibility and trust, essential first steps in the conception and expansion of blockchain technology. Yet as adoption spread, that same transparency brought friction: exposing all user activity, constraining developers, and raising concerns for institutions and regulators.
Full visibility in widely adopted systems opens the door to surveillance and control. It discourages adoption in sectors where privacy is essential, limits what can be built on-chain, hinders institutional participation, and clashes with regulatory requirements.
With fourth-generation blockchains, it is possible to break free of the forced choice between utility and privacy.
Midnight breaks free from those constraints by introducing a new architecture built for programmable privacy, cooperative tokenomics, and real-world integration. It gives developers and users the ability to choose what’s shared, what stays private, and how compliance is met, unlocking the flexibility to build without compromise.
This is the foundation for rational privacy: privacy that is built for real-world utility and integration with existing technology and regulations. It’s the next phase in blockchain’s evolution.
Check out the short recap and event highlights.
The launch of Midnight Foundation and Shielded Technologies
In May 2025, at Consensus Toronto, the Midnight Foundation and Shielded Technologies were launched to drive forward the governance, stewardship and building of the Midnight network in anticipation of mainnet launch.
The Midnight Foundation launched to steward the network’s direction and community, alongside Shielded Technologies, the technical delivery team behind the protocol.
Why are there two entities?
The evolution and decentralized nature of the Midnight network requires separate entities with clarified and distinct roles, focused execution, and aligned incentives.
The Midnight Foundation and Shielded Technologies were created to serve complementary functions:
- The Midnight Foundation exists to guide the long-term direction of the network, support ecosystem development, engage the NIGHT community, and build relationships that expand that Midnight network, fuel innovation and drive growth.
- Shielded Technologies is focused on delivering the protocol: building out the core infrastructure, creating tools for developers, and advancing the technical roadmap.
Clearly delineating responsibilities for each organization ensures each can move rapidly towards their respective goals.This structure creates clear accountability while establishing strong foundations for the scalability of the Midnight network.
Rational privacy
At Redefining On-Chain Privacy, a Consensus Toronto 2025 panel led by Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed, the concept of rational privacy was a key area of focus. Midnight enables developers to build DApps that control what information is revealed without putting sensitive data on-chain.
“Privacy doesn’t need to be absolute or opaque,” said Syed. “It needs to be programmable.”
Midnight will support developer tooling that enables selective disclosure, auditability, and shielded execution, all within one platform. This architecture is made possible by:
- Smart contracts that enable public and private states.
- A novel tokenomics model: NIGHT for governance, DUST for shielded transactions.
- Composable tools that integrate with other chains and ecosystems.
Midnight is not a privacy chain. It’s a programmable privacy layer designed for compliance, usability, and scale.
Cooperative tokenomics: Beyond zero-sum thinking
At Paving the Path for a Multi-Chain Ecosystem, IOHK Founder Charles Hoskinson made it clear: the future of blockchain isn’t competitive, it's collaborative. “The future is multi-chain by design,” he told the audience in Toronto. “Interoperability and shared standards are the way forward.”
That philosophy is embedded in Midnight’s architecture. It is designed with interoperability at its’ core. During the panel, Shielded Technologies’ CTO Ben Beckmann and CEO Eran Barak explained how Midnight allows developers to build privacy-preserving DApps that operate across ecosystems. The privacy tools don’t lock developers into one ecosystem, they let developers plug into choices.
Built for builders
In the Redefining On-Chain Privacy session, Bob Blessing-Hartley, Head of Architecture at Shielded Technologies, laid out how developer experience drives Midnight’s technical design. Zero-knowledge proofs and privacy logic are powerful and have historically been difficult to implement.
Midnight changes that with Compact, a domain-specific language designed for ease and speed. Built with familiar TypeScript patterns and modern tooling, Compact allows developers to focus on what they’re building, not how to stitch together cryptographic primitives.
As Bob emphasizes, “Developer experience isn’t a layer on top of the protocol, it’s baked into the protocol itself.”
The result: faster build cycles, easier integrations, and a privacy-enhancing developer environment that doesn’t require reinventing the wheel.
Opening up the ecosystem
Also introduced during the Paving the Path for a Multi-Chain Ecosystem panel was Midnight’s novel approach: cooperative tokenomics. Midnight’s multichain architecture will expand access and extend its utility beyond the Midnight network and across other blockchain ecosystems. Participants from other blockchain ecosystems will be able to easily interact with the Midnight ecosystem, pay in the native token and create cross-chain applications to combine Midnight functionality with Midnight’s privacy-enhancing capabilities.
This model reflects a core objective of the Midnight Foundation: that networks should grow by cooperating, not competing.
Cooperative tokenomics creates a more inclusive launch strategy and reinforces Midnight’s role as a cross-chain privacy layer: open, fair, cooperative by design, and built to connect.
Follow the key organizations driving the Midnight ecosystem forward by following the Midnight Foundation and Shielded on X, and get all the latest updates from across the Midnight network on Telegram.