Today, let's continue discussing the focus of this week @0xMiden: Practical Privacy

This term actually highlights the most realistic and also the most thorny contradiction in the current crypto industry:

Privacy needs are returning, but regulatory pressure is irreversible.

Over the past few years, global regulatory frameworks have gradually taken shape. KYC/AML has become standard infrastructure in finance, and the EU's MiCA and FATF's Travel Rule are continuously extending into the on-chain world.

Against this backdrop, two "old paths" are becoming increasingly unviable:

🔹 The first type is traditional privacy coins centered on strong anonymity, which technically protect users but frequently face delisting from exchanges and payment channel blocks on the compliance level.

🔹 The second type is extremely transparent public blockchains, which are easier for regulators to accept, but at the cost of permanently exposing users' asset structures, transaction relationships, and business activities.

This is not a simple dichotomy of "Privacy vs. Regulation," but a design-level issue:

👉 Can we, at the system level, provide a solution that meets compliance requirements without sacrificing privacy itself?

@0xMiden's answer is Programmable Privacy.

Unlike "default full anonymity" or "default full transparency," Miden's privacy is a capability that can be rule-based and conditional.

Privacy is no longer a black-and-white attribute but a parameter that developers and applications can actively design. For example, in daily transactions, users' balances and counterparty information remain private, but under certain conditions, selective disclosures can be made to auditors, compliance agencies, or law enforcement.

Similarly, in institutional OTC or settlement scenarios, the transaction process is completely invisible to the market to prevent information leaks and price shocks, while the system itself retains verifiable audit interfaces to meet compliance and post-trade traceability needs.

The key to this approach is: compliance no longer relies on "full transparency," but on "verifiable compliance." Regulators are truly concerned not with whether each transaction is public, but whether rules are followed, risks are controllable, and whether intervention is possible when necessary. Miden's programmable privacy embeds this regulatory logic into the protocol and application layer.

I've always believed that,
In the future, on-chain finance is unlikely to revert to a fully anonymous utopia. Privacy will no longer be a tool to oppose regulation but will become a foundational capability that is institutionalized and engineered.

The significance of Practical Privacy lies here: it is not about emotionally defending privacy nor passively accommodating regulation, but about establishing a sustainable middle ground between the two. @0xMiden's efforts are precisely to provide the underlying technical possibilities for this middle ground.