Actually, I recently revisited @0xMiden because they have been addressing not whether "privacy is needed," but how privacy and the real world can coexist.

On-chain identity has been quite a tangled issue in the past. If you pursue privacy, you can only stick to the most fringe options—DeFi, anonymous protocols, testnets; but as soon as you encounter more formal applications, KYC, AML, and compliance thresholds immediately come into play.

The problem is that so-called compliance is almost always built on a very crude premise: handing over your identity data for the platform to store. Passports, photos, biometric data, addresses—repeatedly submitting these, eventually piling up into data warehouses.

What #Miden and @billions_ntwk are doing this time is essentially flipping this logic. They’re not saying that KYC should be more user-friendly; they’re asking a deeper question: why does compliance necessarily require storing data?

In this system, you still perform a real verification, and that doesn’t change. But after verification, what remains isn’t your identity documents, but a zero-knowledge proof. It proves that you meet certain conditions, not who you are. Whether it’s age, nationality, qualifications, or compliance status, what you reveal is the proof itself, not the raw information. The platform only determines yes or no, without ever touching your privacy.

In simple terms, this replaces trusting the platform with trusting cryptography. The user experience is quite obvious: no need to be re-verified every time you enter a new application; no worries about the platform’s database being compromised and your data being repeatedly resold; more importantly, control over your identity returns to you.

For developers, this step is even more impactful. Previously, building compliant applications essentially meant acting as data custodians—storing PII, bearing compliance responsibilities, and worrying about security risks. Now, they only need to verify whether proofs are valid. No data storage, no privacy breaches, and thus no liability for data leaks. Compliance becomes part of the system architecture rather than an operational cost.

That’s why I believe Miden’s privacy isn’t just a selling point but the fundamental layer of their entire architecture. From generating STARK proofs on the client side to settling only the results on-chain; from hidden states, selective disclosure, to revocable and updatable transaction designs—these elements clearly aren’t just for hardcore tech enthusiasts. They’re paving the way for future on-chain finance and institutional scenarios that require both compliance and privacy, ahead of their time.

Of course, risks are also present. ZK complexity, slow regulation, fierce competition—these are unavoidable. But if you agree on one thing, privacy isn’t an added bonus; it’s an infrastructure that will be necessary sooner or later.

That’s why projects like Miden, slow and steady but with a very clear direction, are worth watching continuously rather than just once or twice during hype cycles. It’s not the kind of project that explodes overnight; it’s more like waiting for the right moment, waiting for the world to catch up with what they’re building.