The Midnight Foundation revealed that MoneyGram, Pairpoint by Vodafone, and eToro will each operate one of ten founding nodes for Midnight, a fourth-generation blockchain designed to deliver rational privacy to web3.
The addition of these three companies—representing industry leaders in global payments, telecommunications, and digital finance—highlights a material shift in how privacy-enhancing blockchain infrastructure is being adopted at an institutional scale. Rather than merely integrating crypto products into existing services, these heavily regulated organisations are stepping up to operate the underlying blockchain infrastructure itself.
The trio joins a growing consortium of federated node operators that already includes Google Cloud, Blockdaemon, Shielded Technologies, and AlphaTON Capital (acting on behalf of Telegram). Together, this initial network will work to strengthen and secure the network before Midnight transitions to full community-driven block production later in 2026.
Fahmi Syed, president of the Midnight Foundation, emphasised the importance of operational reliability during the network’s rollout: “The organisations stepping up to operate the network reflect the standard we’re setting as we approach mainnet. In a network’s early stages, operational reliability matters as much as protocol design. By launching with operators that already maintain large-scale, always-on systems, we’re ensuring our community has a stable environment to build and deploy against.”
Industry perspectives on privacy and compliance
Midnight is specifically built to support real-world applications on public blockchains, an environment where privacy requirements, regulatory expectations, and operational reliability must seamlessly coexist.
MoneyGram: Modernising cross-border payments In addition to running a node, MoneyGram—which operates in over 200 countries and territories—is actively exploring how established payment networks can modernise onto blockchain rails. The goal is to maintain regulatory trust and user privacy, enabling confidential transactions where the settlement itself becomes the proof of compliance. “MoneyGram has been delivering real-world crypto solutions for years, focusing on making the benefits of digital finance accessible to the people who actually need them,” said Luke Tuttle, chief product and technology officer at MoneyGram. “Working with Midnight and running blockchain nodes fits naturally into this strategy, allowing us to help ensure that privacy, compliance and reliability are built in from day one.”
Pairpoint by Vodafone: Securing the Economy of Things Pairpoint is looking to integrate Midnight’s zero-knowledge (ZK) architecture into its ‘Economy of Things’ platform. As millions of connected devices transact autonomously, Pairpoint aims to build an infrastructure where machines can transact privately at scale. “Our Web3 mission is to bring connected devices on-chain and incorporate intelligence at the edge through AI,” stated David Palmer, chief innovation officer at Pairpoint. “Midnight’s zero-knowledge architecture is key to providing the trusted IoT device digital identity, authentication and trust required to scale this across global networks as we move towards the IoT AI economy.”
eToro: Building institutional confidence The participation of NASDAQ-listed eToro, which serves over 35 million users, signals strong institutional confidence in Midnight’s privacy-enhancing infrastructure. The investment platform had previously announced its support for Midnight’s native token, NIGHT, in January. “We were excited to learn about Midnight’s novel approach to programmable data protection and selective disclosure, designed to balance user confidentiality with regulatory compliance,” noted Omri Ross, chief blockchain officer at eToro. “We believe technologies enabling granular control over data visibility will be foundational to the next generation of blockchain infrastructure.”
The road to mainnet
This initial network of federated node operators is designed to ensure decentralisation, security, and stability at launch. According to the Midnight Foundation, launching with operators of this calibre provides developers with the predictable network operations required to deploy a new generation of privacy-enhancing applications.
Syed concluded by highlighting the broader industry implications: “When a global payments network, a leading technology company backed by a Fortune 500 telco, and a publicly traded fintech all choose to operate nodes on the same privacy-enhancing blockchain, that tells you where this industry is heading. MoneyGram, Pairpoint, and eToro are here because they recognise that privacy-enhancing architecture is what makes it possible to bring their industries on-chain.”
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