Midnight is, essentially, a partner chain to Cardano.
The difference is that there is both an unshielded and a shielded component. And then there’s Dust.
Unshielded - just like cardano, there’s an ‘open’ ledger.
Shielded - This is data on your server however by using something called a ‘proof server’ you can prove to the chain that you own that data.
Dust - the ‘gas’. Instead of spending ADA or NIGHT to fund transactions themselves, dust is there to fund it for you, without touching your NIGHT balance.
Setting up a node
- The first thing to do is have a functioning cardano node. That is described elsewhere.
- Set up a cardano-db-sync instance. This is a database that syncronises to your cardano node that your midnight node will interact with. PostgresDB is the technology here.
- The midnight node itself. Running that on a franken-PC is not for the faint-hearted. It’s so old that the most recent binaries won’t run and there’s no way of compiling the binary at the moment. This means using a docker image… Configuration of that node has not been straight forward but it’s nearly there.