Led by former Input | Output (IO) and Parity Technologies executive Fahmi Syed, the Midnight Foundation will support the growth of Midnight’s rational privacy ecosystem and guide its transition to full decentralization. TORONTO, May 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Consensus 2025 — Today marks the official launch of the Midnight Foundation, an organization committed to supporting the growth of the Midnight blockchain ecosystem. Midnight is a platform enabling decentralized applications that deliver rational privacy – programmable data protection with selective disclosure. The Foundation’s core mission is to foster a thriving developer community, expand access to Midnight’s privacy-first technology, and guide the network’s evolution toward full decentralization. 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 leading 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 the Foundation to redefine what Web3 infrastructure can become: private, compliant, decentralized—and ready for real-world adoption. The Midnight Foundation will be led by Fahmi Syed who has been appointed as President. A recognized leader in decentralized governance and digital innovation, Syed brings over two decades of experience in financial strategy, operational leadership, and decentralized technology to the role. Most recently, he supported the development of the Midnight project at IO. Prior to 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, Europe’s largest hedge fund launch of 2021. He also held senior leadership roles at Marshall Wace, where he contributed to the firm’s global growth to $45 billion 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 decentralized 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 decentralized technology in a way that truly protects users’ rights and privacy. I’m honored 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.” A new kind of blockchain network, 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. Moving forward, the Midnight Foundation will look to build a wide ecosystem of partners, builders and token holders, working together to realize the potential of the Midnight blockchain network. We invite you to join us on this journey. Media Contact: Georgia Hanias Midnight Foundation [email protected] About Midnight Foundation The Midnight Foundation is an organization dedicated to advancing the development, adoption, and real-world impact of the Midnight network, the privacy enhancing blockchain project developed by Shielded Technologies. Designed for confidential smart contracts, Midnight enables censorship-resistant yet compliant decentralized applications. It leverages zero-knowledge proofs and a cooperative tokenomics architecture- with NIGHT as the utility token and DUST as the shielded transaction resource- to deliver a powerful combination of privacy, security, and decentralization. For more information, visit: https://midnight.foundation About Shielded Technologies Shielded Technologies is an emerging engineering company pioneering privacy-enhancing, decentralized technologies designed for real-world compatibility. A spinout from leading Web3 venture studio Input Output, Shielded brings deep cryptographic expertise as the core technology partner for the Midnight Network — a new blockchain that leverages advanced cryptographic proofs and a cooperative tokenomics design to protect data and metadata while ensuring auditability and compliance. In collaboration with the Midnight Foundation, Shielded is shaping a global ecosystem that upholds the fundamental freedoms of association, commerce, and expression. For more information, visit: https://shielded.io
