The Good Tech Companies - Building with Midnight: Privacy for Devs, Not Just Suits

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/building-with-midnight-privacy-for-devs-not-just-suits. Midnight is a privacy-first blockchain for developers, offering ZK smart contracts, modular tooling, and secure infrastructure beyond public-by-default chains. Check more stories related to web3 at: https://hackernoon.com/c/web3. You can also check exclusive content about #midnight-blockchain, #privacy-in-web3, #zero-knowledge-smart-contracts, #zk-cryptography, #web3-for-developers, #cardano-spinout, #private-dapps, #good-company, and more. This story was written by: @iohk. Learn more about this writer by checking @iohk's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. Midnight, built by Shielded (a Cardano spinout), is redefining blockchain privacy for developers. With zero-knowledge smart contracts, TypeScript-based tooling, and composable infrastructure, it tackles transparency risks while enabling secure dApp development. Midnight puts privacy at the core, empowering builders—not just institutions—in Web3.

This audio is presented by Hacker Noon, where anyone can learn anything about any technology. Building with Midnight. Privacy for devs, not just suits, by Ioh-HK. Fami Syed, president of the Midnight Foundation when it comes to blockchain, transparency has long been both its greatest strength and its greatest barrier to mass adoption. While it enables trustless systems and verifiability, it also introduces a critical challenge, the absence of data privacy. This limitation has prevented banks, fintech and payment providers from committing fully because they cannot afford to expose sensitive transactions, internal capital flows, or client metadata on a public chain. Imagine a high-stakes M&A transaction, a payroll run for thousands of employees or collateral

transfers, all visible to everyone. That's a compliance nightmare, a security risk, and a breach of fiduciary trust. In traditional systems organizations rely on strict internal controls over data visibility to keep sensitive data confidential. But today's blockchain infrastructure offers no protection. It makes no distinction and treats all participants the same. Whether you're a defy protocol or a regulated bank, your data gets the same level of public exposure. As a result, blockchains are often too transparent for serious institutionalos, leading organizations to choose between innovation and confidentiality.

It's not just the institutions that are affected, developers and DevOps teams that are building the decentralized systems of the future are also impacted. On public chains, every line of smart contract logic, open-sourced or proprietary, transaction flow, and deployment configuration is exposed. For engineering teams, that means no ability to control when or how sensitive logic is revealed once deployed, which jeopardizes competitive advantages. Institutions still matter but they're not the whole story. Whether you're an indie dev, a startup in stealth mode, an open source contributor, or part of a dev-ops team building in sectors like health care, supply chain, or public services, the lack of privacy tools makes it difficult to build responsibly and compliantly in Web3.

Developers don't need another transparent chain but one where privacy is part of the toolkit. If Defy and Web 3 are going to scale, the needs of builders and not just institutional stakeholders must also be addressed. That's where Midnight comes in. As a privacy first chain developed by shielded technologies, a spin-out of input out. output global, the firm behind Cardana, Midnight offers what the developer community has been asking for, programmable, composable, and scalable privacy that fits seamlessly into the modern development workflow. It's not privacy as an add-on feature or workaround but privacy as

infrastructure. This is what the ecosystem wants and needs, a community fed up with public by default. In its 2024 developer community survey, shielded technologies uncovered that developers wanted privacy as a foundational layer with over 78% of respondents viewing it as a core value of blockchain, not an optional feature. But even more telling, a significant portion of those surveyed admitted to avoiding building certain types of applications such as financial tools, healthcare apps, OR enterprise protocols because the current blockchain infrastructure simply doesn't support private operations. That makes sense. Every time, a developer writes a smart contract, they have to assume that the whole world is watching.

That's fine for some things, but not when you're handling sensitive data or testing novel logic. Overcoming this challenge isn't just about protecting users but also protecting the builders themselves, from IP theft and exploit vectors to the reputational risks of deploying on infrastructure that can't offer the confidentiality they need. Midnight's proposition. Privacy as code. Midnight responds with a bold proposition. Privacy is not an after-th but an intentional design choice. Its architecture empowers developers to use as zero knowledge, ZK, cryptography via smart contracts, written in compact,

a type script-like language. That's another win for development teams. 65% of survey participants cited language familiarity as a barrier to entry in Web 3. Midnight bridges that gap, eliminating the need to learn obscure domain-specific languages. By allowing developers to define who sees what, who sees what, and under which conditions, Midnight offers rational privacy at the contract level.

Applications can shield transaction data, logic, metadata, or user credentials, all while keeping the overall application verifiable and auditable. This is huge for teams that need to balance privacy and regulatory transparency, something both developers and institutions want but rarely get. More DevOps pain points. Midnight's direct responses. There are other recurring frustrations that engineers face when trying to build on existing layer 1 and layer 2 chains, and which Midnight is actively addressing. They include, one, security concerns from transparent execution, transparent smart contract execution has a risk that could be exploited. With ZK technology, Midnight enables developers to define logic and transactional intent that drastically reduces the

attack surface, providing additional privacy Tobith the application and its users. Two, Complex tooling and steep learning curves blockchain tooling is notoriously fragmented. Developers complain about disjointed dev stacks, inconsistent documentation, and arcane syntax. Midnight, in contrast, prioritizes developer experience, DX. TypeScript smart contracts, unified software development kits, SDKs, and familiar Web 2 tooling mean that Web 3 development no longer requires a paradigm shift. It lowers the barrier for developers and engineers alike. 3. Need for modular, composable infrastructure developers increasingly want modular tools that play well together. Midnight supports composability, enabling developers to build privacy-preserving components that can integrate across DAPs. This aligns with the surveys finding that interoperability and integration where top developer demands.

4. Uncertainty around governance and UP grades developers are cautious about building on chains with unclear upgrade paths or centralized governance. Midnight will provide a transparent governance model where community requests, protocol updates, and smart contract templates are openly discussed. This transparency is vital for teams planning long-term integrations or services. Real-world applications, built with Midnight in mind, Midnight's architecture unlocks an entirely new class of applications that we re-previously too risky or too complex to build on public chains. With Midnight the applications below are possible. Private DAOs where votes are cast confidentially but verified cryptographically. Decentralized payroll platforms where employee compensation stays private but compliant. Supply chain DAPs where suppliers can prove certification or inventory data without revealing trade secrets.

Identity management systems that allow for selective disclosure of user credentials. Each of these solves a real problem flagged by developers, specifically how toper it securely in the open. A major change is underway. Midnight is a representation of how Web 3 development is maturing. The priorities are a no longer speed and hype but security, control, usability, and privacy to support mass adoption. DevOps teams now expect the same things from blockchain infrastructure that they get from cloud providers, permissioning, access control, sandboxing, modularity, and privacy. Midnight delivers that, without sacrificing decentralization, and most importantly,

it gives developers agency. They don't need more. more coins. They need platforms they can actually build on Midnight as answering that call. Future of Web 3. Privacy is infrastructure. Privacy is a needed foundation of Web 3 applications. Without it, developers are limited in what they can build, users are exposed, and institutions stay on the sidelines. Midnight proves that privacy can be rational, programmable, composable, and developer-friendly. It transforms privacy from a barrier into an enabler, for businesses, regulators, and most crucially, for builders and users. In a blockchain world that has pushed the virtues of transparency without addressing the challenges this brings, Midnight offers balance. It's not just

for suits. It's for developers, and that's exactly who will shape the next wave of adoption. about the author Fahmi-Said is the president of the Midnight Foundation, the organization dedicated to supporting the ecosystem development and global adoption of Midnight, a privacy-first blockchain protocol designed for compliance and selective disclosure. Midnight is built by Shielded, a spin-out of input output, EO, the engineering firm behind Kerdana, Charles Hoskinson. About Charles Hoskinson as one of the most influential voices in blockchain, Charles Hoskinson continuesto shape the future of Web 3 through pioneering work on decentralized governance, scalable infrastructure, and real-world applications of blockchain. He will be

tending Rare Evo 2025 to share insights on where the industry is headed and how midnight fits into the next phase of digital infrastructure. About Rare Evo, Rare Evo is a premier blockchain conference that celebrates interoperability and THE convergence of Web 3 with traditional industries. It brings together projects, thought leaders, developers, investors, and enthusiasts from across ecosystems for high-impact networking, education, and collaboration. The event is designed as a hybrid experience, blending the best of global blockchain summits into one annual gathering. Thank you for listening to this Hackernoon story, read by artificial intelligence. Visit hackernoon.com to read, Write, learn and publish.