Input Output Global (IOG) founder Charles Hoskinson announced on Thursday that Midnight, the company’s long-awaited privacy-focused blockchain, will officially launch during the last week of March.
The announcement came during Hoskinson’s keynote speech at Consensus Hong Kong, marking a major step forward in IOG’s efforts to bring data protection and regulatory compliance to decentralized systems.
“We have some great collaborations that help us execute it,” he said. “Google is one of them. Telegram is another. We are very excited, there will be more to come.”
Midnight uses zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs to enable selective disclosure. Think of it as a smart curtain for blockchain data, allowing users to share only what they choose and keep the rest private. It functions as a partner chain of the Cardano smart contract platform and provides privacy and regulatory compliance for decentralized applications.
Along with the mainnet timeline, Hoskinson introduced Midnight City Simulator, an interactive platform that offers insight into how Midnight offers scalable privacy through selective disclosure. So-called rational privacy ensures that transaction data remains private by default, while specific information can be shared with authorized parties when necessary.
This flexibility balances transparency and confidentiality on the blockchain through multiple disclosure views, categorized as public, auditor, and god, each with a different level of access.
The simulation, run on midnight.city, went live on Thursday at 10:00 a.m. Hong Kong time, although public access to the simulation remains restricted until February 26, according to a press release.
The simulation, which runs on the Midnight network and recruits AI-powered agents that interact unpredictably to create a constant flow of transactions, shows how well the blockchain can handle real-world demand and scale accordingly.
IOG said this test demonstrates the network’s ability to continue generating and processing tests at scale, an important step in demonstrating that it is ready for real-world use.
