Charles Hoskinson, founder of Input Output Global (IOG), confirmed Thursday at Consensus Hong Kong that the long-awaited privacy blockchain Midnight will launch mainnet during the final week of March. The announcement marks a major milestone for Cardano's ecosystem.
March Mainnet Launch
During his keynote, Hoskinson revealed that Midnight will function as a partner chain to Cardano, providing privacy and regulatory compliance for dApps. “We have some great collaborations to help us run it — Google is one of them, Telegram is another,” he said. “There's more to come.”
Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Selective Disclosure
Midnight uses zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to enable selective disclosure, described as a “smart curtain” for blockchain data. Users can choose what to reveal while keeping the rest private. The system features three disclosure views: public, auditor, and god, each with different access levels, balancing transparency and confidentiality.
Midnight City Simulation Goes Live
Alongside the mainnet timeline, IOG unveiled Midnight City Simulation, an interactive platform hosted at midnight.city. It runs on the Midnight network and uses AI-driven agents to generate a steady flow of transactions, testing real-world scalability. Public access is restricted until February 26. IOG said the simulation proves the network's ability to generate and process proofs at scale, a critical step toward production readiness.
The concept of “rational privacy” ensures that transaction data remains private by default, but specific details can be shared with authorized parties when needed, offering a compliance-friendly solution for DeFi and identity use cases.