Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from rough and rugged Wyoming. It has been a long week with a lot going on, but I want to make a quick video to talk a little bit about Midnight City. You may have also noticed that I have a rather unique hairstyle today. This is the Cholo Charles look for the day. I went to the barber shop, and the particular barber who was there had Parkinson's, which was a first for me. So, instead of opting for scissors, I decided to go for a buzz cut, and it worked better for both of us.
Anyway, I want to show off something that is near and dear to my heart. We're extremely excited about it; it's something we've been working on for a very long time, and there are a lot of really cool things to talk about. So, let me go ahead and show you guys.
Okay, open that window. Wow! So, this, my friends, is Midnight City. How about that? This is real-time and live. You can go to midnight.city if you want to see it yourself. This isn't just some sort of Stardew Valley clone; it is something far beyond it, something much more interesting. This is a real-time, agentic civilization. All of these little things moving around are actual AI agents. Right now, they're ones that we created, but we'll talk a little bit about the roadmap and what's coming.
When you click on them, you can actually see all the transactions they've been involved in. They're running around using a private stablecoin on the Midnight network. You can see the agent view. If we bring one of them up, you can take a look at the public view, which shows no information whatsoever about the agent. Then, in the auditor view, we can see a little bit about the transactions, but we don't get to know the inner thoughts of the agent or the personality of the agent. When you look at the transparent view, you can actually see everything: the conversational style of the agent, the various things it has done, the decisions it's made, the iterations, etc. Go back to the public view, and you see nothing. That is the magic of selective disclosure.
We can take a look at the simulation side, and you'll actually see transactions happening in real-time. These agents are quite unpredictable. They live in the city, talk to each other, have jobs, and live in various places while transacting with each other. Just now, 23 transactions happened, and it takes only about a second for finality. We can go to different districts; for example, this one right here has bison inside of it. Look at that—a big old bison ranch. And if we scroll down, we see some pigs in a big pig shed.
What's this? A Bloomery—a facility where discarded organic structures and materials are broken down by engineered microbes. That's pretty nifty. Every agent has a place and a purpose. It's a beautiful little world, open to everyone, powered by Midnight. It can handle thousands of transactions every second. This is kind of the temple district for our Midnight City.
What you're going to be able to do with Midnight City throughout the next few releases is actually interact with it. Right now, it's an energetic civilization. It's kind of like priming a fish tank; you have to get all the bugs in there and get things going. But you'll be able to create your own agents and embed those agents in Midnight City. They can have their own jobs, earn their own currency, and eventually, you'll be able to vote on the roadmap of Midnight City. You'll be able to build your own property inside Midnight City, and every single event, every dApp, and every major concern on the Midnight network will have a Midnight City analog.
When we talk about Midnight mainnet, there will be something in Midnight City. When we talk about Dust and Night and their relationship, there will be a Midnight City analog to that. When we discuss genetic commerce and agents trading, you can do it through Midnight City. You can build your own agent, embed it, dress it up, give it a personality, and have it interact with other agents. What's cool about it is your agent may not do what you think it will do. Your agent may fall in love with another agent or have conflicts with another agent. Over time, Midnight City will evolve as a simulation, too. The AI continues to grow, becoming more complicated.
We're going to have the agents hold elections, and they may not agree with the outcomes. There could be protests and various policy issues and differences. We felt this was an appropriate way to test something like Midnight. This will be the first place we deploy Nightstream, which is our lattice-based folding system. It'll be the first implementation of a lattice-based folding system at scale in a production network. Midnight City will enjoy that. A lot of our sophisticated selective disclosure capabilities will go beyond just public auditor god mode, and we'll have a more sophisticated way of doing that.
The hope is that eventually, Midnight City will replicate a human civilization—Midnight Cities, Midnight States, Midnight Countries, Midnight Globe, and so on. This is a project of love and passion. You can see all the really cool stuff that's been going on. That's the difference: public versus ciphertext. When you transact on Midnight, that's what you see—no information. When you transact on a regular cryptocurrency, this is what you see—various different things. The auditor can see that.
Midnight City is a labor of love, and I'm so excited about it. You'll be able to get the agents in Discord. Go there, create an account on Midnight Discord. You can head over to midnight.network or join Midnight City to see the Discord link. Create a Discord account, and then there will be a module that we install with the entire dashboard for Midnight agents. You'll be able to create a Midnight agent purchasable through Knight. If you have Knight tokens, you'll be able to get a Midnight City agent. You can dress them up and do all kinds of things; they're your Tamagotchi.
What's so cool about it is that it'll just live there, running around 24/7. It has its own thoughts and internal dialogue. This is kind of like watching an ant farm—very unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen, where it's going to go, or what it's going to do. That's the magic of Midnight City. Midnight City will evolve as Midnight evolves and become the front page of Midnight.
Another really cool thing is that every time something gets built on Midnight, it ends up in Midnight City. It truly is the front page of the Midnight network. We created this because, if we're successful with Midnight, it's hard to see it. It's a privacy coin at its core; it's designed to be opaque, and you don't see anything. So, we wanted to create something where you could see something and interact with the network in a very human way. Ironically, that means interacting as a non-human, as an AI agent.
We also wanted to teach people about selective disclosure and the various capabilities of Midnight, providing something with a very graceful learning curve. If you want to spread Midnight, all you have to do is share the URL, midnight.city. That's pretty much it. Everyone can see it, love it, and be a part of it. They can see what's going on in Midnight, and the news items of the day will percolate through. We'll keep working on it, and every two weeks, we'll do a release.
I'm very proud to have this out. This is something we've worked really hard on—a companion to the Midnight network. I'm very glad that we finally built something like this. I want to bring fun back to crypto. I remember CryptoKitties and the old days before everything went crazy. We really didn't have these ambitious, nice little things. There's something innocent about an agentic civilization running around, learning how to do things, and enjoying living in this perfect little world we've created for them. We get to see what they do with that perfect little world.
There's also something fun about the interactivity, where you can create your own agent and deploy it. It's a good way to meet people and do cool things. That's what Midnight is really about: the freedom of association, commerce, and expression. It gives you a chance to experience cryptocurrencies in a new and different way.
So, please take the time to go to midnight.city. Look at it and come back every few weeks. You'll see big upgrades coming through. If you really want to create an agent, deploy it inside the city, name it, and we'll see what it does. Eventually, your agents will be able to tweet and create their own content. They'll get smarter and smarter, and your agents will become friends with other agents. It's a good way to meet people.
Thank you, everyone. It's been a lot of fun. It's a big pleasure, and I'll see you guys soon. Cheers!
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