I'm submitting my homework. I announced joining @0xMiden the day before yesterday,
and today I'll give everyone a simple explanation of what Miden is actually doing.
Over the past few years, on-chain privacy solutions have been stuck in an awkward either-or dilemma: for privacy, you have to go "completely invisible," with transactions, balances, and paths all invisible; for compliance, you can only go "fully transparent," with all information exposed on-chain.
The result is nobody's happy: regulators naturally reject black boxes, institutional capital doesn't dare enter; ordinary users, once on-chain, end up publicly exposing their assets and behavior to the whole world.
What Miden wants to solve is precisely this structural problem.
It no longer asks you "do you want privacy," but instead makes privacy a configurable parameter for every single transaction.
In Miden, privacy isn't Yes / No, but rather a spectrum:
☀Public: behavior, amounts, parties fully verifiable, suitable for audit and compliance scenarios ☀Selective: key fields verifiable, remaining information encrypted, disclosed only to specific parties ☀Private: only submit validity proofs, assets and operation paths completely hidden
This isn't just a small UX trick, but a protocol-level capability. So why can Miden achieve "configure privacy per transaction"?
The core lies in its three-layer architecture.
First, privacy starts from the client.
On Miden, transactions are executed locally on the user's device and generate STARK proofs, then submitted on-chain. The chain only verifies "this transaction is correct," not "what exactly did you do." Privacy isn't concealment after the fact, but a native property.
Second, the hybrid Account + Notes model.
Accounts can be public, contract entry points visible; the actual asset state and operation details are placed in optionally private Notes. Privacy granularity is broken down to the "state level," rather than packaging entire transactions.
Third, "selective disclosure" isn't a compromise, but born for compliance.
Regulators can verify legality, whether there's double-spending, whether there's violation, but don't need to see balances, counterparties, or operation details. To the outside world, this information remains encrypted. In other words, regulators see verifiable facts, not all raw data.
And precisely because of this, Miden unlocks the deadlock on both ends.
For institutions, no need to directly jump into the "fully anonymous" world, they can participate using public accounts and private operations, privacy becomes an adjustable parameter rather than a risk. For ordinary users, this is the first time on the same chain to decide privacy by scenario: transfers can be private, DeFi can be selective, interactions with institutions can be public, no need to switch chains, no need to switch wallets.
Going back to the most fundamental need, Miden transforms privacy from black-or-white into an adjustable spectrum, allowing regulation and privacy to coexist in the protocol.
I think this path is necessary, because only this way can blockchain truly be mainstream-adopted, making this pie even bigger.
I'm submitting my homework. I announced joining @0xMiden the day before yesterday,
and today I'll give everyone a simple explanation of what Miden is actually doing.
Over the past few years, on-chain privacy solutions have been stuck in an awkward either-or dilemma:
for privacy, you have to go "completely invisible," with transactions, balances, and paths all invisible;
for compliance, you can only go "fully transparent," with all information exposed on-chain.
The result is nobody's happy:
regulators naturally reject black boxes, institutional capital doesn't dare enter;
ordinary users, once on-chain, end up publicly exposing their assets and behavior to the whole world.
What Miden wants to solve is precisely this structural problem.
It no longer asks you "do you want privacy," but instead makes privacy a configurable parameter for every single transaction.
In Miden, privacy isn't Yes / No, but rather a spectrum:
☀Public: behavior, amounts, parties fully verifiable, suitable for audit and compliance scenarios
☀Selective: key fields verifiable, remaining information encrypted, disclosed only to specific parties
☀Private: only submit validity proofs, assets and operation paths completely hidden
This isn't just a small UX trick, but a protocol-level capability. So why can Miden achieve "configure privacy per transaction"?
The core lies in its three-layer architecture.
First, privacy starts from the client.
On Miden, transactions are executed locally on the user's device and generate STARK proofs, then submitted on-chain. The chain only verifies "this transaction is correct," not "what exactly did you do." Privacy isn't concealment after the fact, but a native property.
Second, the hybrid Account + Notes model.
Accounts can be public, contract entry points visible; the actual asset state and operation details are placed in optionally private Notes. Privacy granularity is broken down to the "state level," rather than packaging entire transactions.
Third, "selective disclosure" isn't a compromise, but born for compliance.
Regulators can verify legality, whether there's double-spending, whether there's violation, but don't need to see balances, counterparties, or operation details. To the outside world, this information remains encrypted. In other words, regulators see verifiable facts, not all raw data.
And precisely because of this, Miden unlocks the deadlock on both ends.
For institutions, no need to directly jump into the "fully anonymous" world,
they can participate using public accounts and private operations, privacy becomes an adjustable parameter rather than a risk.
For ordinary users, this is the first time on the same chain to decide privacy by scenario:
transfers can be private, DeFi can be selective, interactions with institutions can be public,
no need to switch chains, no need to switch wallets.
Going back to the most fundamental need, Miden transforms privacy from black-or-white into an adjustable spectrum, allowing regulation and privacy to coexist in the protocol.
I think this path is necessary, because only this way can blockchain truly be mainstream-adopted, making this pie even bigger.