Midnight is Live

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Today is March 30th, 2026, and I am pleased to report that we have hit our deadline. Midnight is live and has been for a while. The Midnight network's average block time is holding beautifully at six seconds, with 163,000 blocks already processed. The finality gap is about two blocks.

You can see all the different validators: Vodafone, eToro, WorldPay, Bullish, MoneyGram, and Google is also in the list. The filter gateway is looking good, and the boot node is functioning well. If you run all the diagnostics, everything looks solid. Midnight is running, and everything is healthy. A few more things: LACE will be updated today or tomorrow.

We're finalizing the latest release for the mainnet launch. Currently, LACE is at version 136.0, and version 136.2 has been submitted and is awaiting approval in the web store. Once the Apple auto-update happens, all the Midnight-specific features will be automatically available in LACE.

Several others have already launched their own wallets and infrastructure in Midnight, but LACE is ready to go. There are also a few launch test apps for this guarded launch, including 1AM and Balance, so you can play around and have fun with it. This launch is about keeping everyone happy, ensuring a stable network, allowing developers to build and deploy, and enhancing the user experience. It's exciting to see that there are already many things ready to go on day one. Additionally, I wrote a book titled "Proving Nothing: A Layered Guide to Zero-Knowledge Proof Systems.

" I wanted to ensure it was available for the launch of Mainnet. The book is in my GitHub repository, and I will provide a link. I released the book for free under a Creative Commons license, so just give credit where it's due, and you can use it for anything you want. The book covers various aspects of zero-knowledge systems and discusses Midnight extensively. It outlines seven different layers: the trust layer of the system, the languages used to write the proofs, witness generation, arithmetization, the proof system and cryptography, verification infrastructure, and finally, privacy-enhancing technologies and the market as a whole.

The book will be updated frequently, and my hope is that it serves as a one-stop shop for understanding how zero-knowledge systems work at scale. It's written for non-technical people, aiming to engage everyday individuals who are curious about the topic. This is likely the best non-technical guide currently available, yet it remains comprehensive. It discusses the KZG summoning for the BLS curve used in Ethereum and includes the ADOPT framework lifted from a paper. It also covers ZKVMs, addressing questions like what a ZKVM is, why you need it, and when to use it.

It's a comprehensive resource, and I'm excited to have a single reference point. Please download it and enjoy. As I mentioned, it's in my repository. I also added all of the tech files last night, though I may have accidentally ignored them. I'll push them today.

The current version is 1.10. Midnight is running, and we're looking forward to a lot more coming soon. Every few weeks, new updates will be released, and the first major update will happen in a few months, adding a ton of new functionality and features. We're in the guarded era, with a strong, federated network.

We already have over 130 bugs on our backlog to address in the next two to three weeks, discovered during extensive QA. Nothing is a showstopper, but we believe in shipping early and often. LACE version 2.0 is coming very soon, with the final version of LACE likely being 136.2.

LACE V2 will be released in April, along with mobile support. Everything we do is open source, so enjoy Midnight and the network. Learn all about it, join our Discord, and visit midnight.network. There will be plenty of new features rolling out gradually over the next few weeks, with major upgrades every two to three months.

The token launched in December, and the network launched in March. It wasn't a long wait, was it? We said we would do it, and we did. I even provided a 300-page book to read about it. I'm proud of everyone involved.

On behalf of Input Output, I would like to thank everyone at Shielded and the Midnight Foundation. Thank you to all our partners, collaborators, volunteers, and others. We are now in the age of Midnight. Congratulations! Cheers!