To foster a thriving developer community and expand access to the Midnight blockchain ecosystem, a new organisation, the Midnight Foundation, has launched.
Midnight is a platform enabling decentralised applications that deliver rational privacy – programmable data protection with selective disclosure. The launch of the new Midnight Foundation will guide the network’s evolution towards full decentralisation.
Through a wide range of initiatives — including open-source tooling, education, and targeted funding—the Foundation will support builders developing real-world use cases using Midnight. Crucially, the Foundation will also play a role in Midnight’s path to autonomous governance. As the network matures, control over protocol upgrades, treasury allocation, and ecosystem development will transition to NIGHT token holders through on-chain voting.
The Foundation will ensure this transition is secure, transparent, and community-driven. These efforts will be key to empowering it to showcase how Web3 infrastructure can be private, compliant, decentralised – and ready for real-world adoption.
Understanding the Midnight blockchain ecosystem
Midnight is designed to overcome the limitations of traditional blockchains that expose all transaction data by default. It uses zero-knowledge cryptography and a cooperative tokenomics design to enable truly private, censorship-resistant, and regulation-ready applications.
Its public utility token, NIGHT, enables governance and rewards, while its shielded resource, DUST, powers transactions without exposing metadata or wallet details. Unlike typical blockchain fee models, DUST is renewable, non-transferable, and decays over time – a radical new model that makes the network sustainable, privacy-protecting, and secure from economic exploitation.
Leading the charge
The Midnight Foundation will be led by Fahmi Syed, who has been appointed as president. Syed brings over two decades of experience in financial strategy, operational leadership, and decentralised technology to the role. Most recently, he supported the development of the Midnight project at IO. Before that, he was CFO at Parity Technologies, the team behind Polkadot and Kusama, where he led financial operations during a period of rapid ecosystem expansion.
Earlier in his career, Syed was chief operating officer at FIFTHDELTA, the European hedge fund. He also held senior leadership roles at Marshall Wace, where he contributed to the firm’s global growth to $45billion in assets under management.
The core development of the Midnight network itself was led by Shielded Technologies, an engineering spinout from IO, the creators of innovations such as Cardano. Shielded Technologies was founded to pioneer privacy-first, regulation-ready decentralised technologies, and continues to play an integral role in supporting Midnight’s technical innovation and ecosystem growth.
Commenting on his appointment, Syed said: “The Midnight Foundation has an extraordinary opportunity to shape the future of decentralised technology in a way that truly protects users’ rights and privacy. I’m honoured to lead this mission at such a critical time. Working alongside Shielded Technologies and its visionary CEO, Eran Barak, we are committed to building a thriving, global ecosystem that brings Midnight’s transformative technology to life for developers, businesses, and communities everywhere.”
