April brings new partnerships that extend the Midnight ecosystem, along with updates shaped by both community input and direct developer feedback. Meanwhile, documentation resources continue to grow. Substantial upgrades to testnet-02 are coming in the next few weeks, focused on scalability and improving the developer experience. Developer tools continue to mature, with the release of Midnight.js 1.0.0 and the new Rust-based Indexer. Plus, the Zero-Limits Hackathon is now live.
Ecosystem
Here are the new activities, tools, partnerships, and tutorials across the Midnight ecosystem.
Zero-Limits hackathon
The Zero-Limits Hackathon is now underway. Anyone building with zero-knowledge tech can enter. Whether you’ve got a fresh idea, a DApp ready to test, or a bold plan for the next Web3 unicorn, build it on Midnight. The Discord community is supportive, judges give constructive feedback, and it’s a perfect environment to learn, experiment, and grow.
Submit projects in NFTs, gaming, identity, social, finance, DAOs, or anything else that you want to create. Registration is open on the hackathons page now through May 5.
A step-by-step smart contract walkthrough
A new step-by-step tutorial shows how to build a simple bulletin board DApp using Compact, Midnight’s purpose-built programming language. The DApp allows users to post and delete messages, with zero-knowledge proofs verifying that only the original poster can remove their own.
The example is straightforward and covers key fundamentals: identity protection, typed structures, and Compact’s clean syntax.
Watch the video tutorial, and follow along step-by-step in the docs.
Open sourcing Midnight repos
The first Midnight example repo, example-counter, is now open source on GitHub. Clone it, customize it, or contribute with a pull request, it’s a simple starter DApp designed to help you get building fast.
This marks the shift away from ZIP file downloads in tutorials. Examples are being migrated to public repos, making it easier to learn and build with Midnight as updates roll out.
Ecosystem partners
Self-custody wallets are critical for blockchain users to maintain full control over their assets and data. Users of SubWallet, NuFi, Vespr, Gero, Tokeo Pay, Keystone, Yoroi and Begin Wallet will be able to securely interact with Midnight. Read the full announcement to see how this expands access to a decentralized, user-controlled experience.
Lace Wallet continues to play a key role in the Midnight ecosystem. As one of the first integrations, Lace marked an early milestone in building the Midnight wallet ecosystem. Brandon Wolf, Lace Wallet’s General Manager explains: “The upcoming Lace beta enables seamless use of Midnight and access to its DApp ecosystem, fully aligned with the latest protocol updates. Built on Lace’s strong security standards and backed by the deep expertise of Input Output, it offers a secure and reliable gateway into Midnight." To see what’s coming next, check out Brandon’s appearance on the Unshielded podcast.
IAMX is working with Midnight to combine data protection and decentralized identifier (DID). This partnership is a step toward giving users real control over their on-chain identity. Learn more from the X Spaces announcement with IAMX.
Midnight’s new ecosystem partnership with Balance, a trusted digital asset custodian, will help build secure and scalable digital infrastructure for institutions. This ecosystem partnership will focus on making privacy-first blockchain tools that are reliable, compliant, and ready for real-world use.
Network upgrades
Substantial improvements are coming to Midnight testnet-02 to improve developer experience and scalability. Key improvements include the transition from Partner Chains v1.2.0 to v1.5.0, a shift from the Pluto-Eris proving system to BLS12-381, and a new ledger storage implementation.
All the details are included in the recent testnet-02 upgrade blog. This blog will be kept updated, so check back there to monitor any further developments.
Releases & documentation
April is a significant month for major releases, so here’s what developers need to know.
Introducing the Midnight Indexer
The new Midnight Indexer has now been released. It’s a modular, high-performance indexing service designed to optimize how blockchain data flows from a Midnight node to end-user applications. It retrieves block history, processes data, and makes it available through a flexible GraphQL API supporting queries, mutations, and real-time subscriptions.
This new Indexer is written in Rust and is intended to replace the legacy Scala-based Indexer in the future. It offers significantly improved performance, easier deployments across local and cloud environments, and robust wallet integration. Midnight Indexer supports both PostgreSQL and SQLite.
Key differences from the Pub-Sub Indexer
- Fully rewritten in Rust for better performance, reliability, and maintainability
- Architecture shifted from monolithic Scala to modular, service-oriented design
- Fully compatible with Midnight Wallet SDK v4+ and Lace Wallet v2.0.0+
If you're building on Midnight, now’s the time to begin testing integrations and preparing for migration. The Scala-based Pub-Sub Indexer remains functional, but is officially deprecated and will be phased out in future releases.
Midnight.js 1.0.0
Midnight.js 1.0.0 is now live. This is the official TypeScript client library for interacting with smart contracts and building private, composable DApps on Midnight.
The 1.0.0 release marks a key milestone. It standardizes versioning, improves tooling, and adds support for Wallet 4.0.0 and Bech32m, while delivering cleaner development ergonomics across the board. Full release notes are published in the docs.
Bech32m new default address
Midnight now uses Bech32m as the new standard for wallet addresses and public keys across all major components, including Wallet SDK 4.0, Wallet API 4.0, DApp Connector API v2.0, and the Midnight Lace Wallet. Unlike hexadecimal, Bech32m is human-readable, includes error detection, and carries useful metadata like network and address type, making it safer and more user-friendly. Read more about the improvements and why Midnight moved to Bech32m.
Join the community
To connect directly with the Midnight community, join the Midnight Discord server. It’s the best place to find real-time information, connect with developers, and troubleshoot problems.