Midnight Buildathon · Wave 1

Credibility you can prove.

A verifiable credibility layer for online publishing,
built on Midnight.

Midnight Buildathon — Wave 1 September 2026
02 / 08

The problem

Publishing online is easy.
Proving credibility is hard.

  • A post can come from a journalist, doctor, accountant, engineer, news outlet — or anyone.
  • Readers have no portable way to verify what a source can legitimately claim about itself.
  • Trust signals are fragmented: platform badges, screenshots, reputation, manual research.

Vero focuses on one narrower problem:
making source credibility provable.

03 / 08

The solution

From "an authority says so"
to "a proof says so."

1

Source holds a credential (journalist, professional, organisation)

2

Compact circuit proves the credential is in the issuer registry, and unexpired

3

Source discloses only what it chooses

4

Reader sees a cryptographically verified signal

Identity and credibility are separate dimensions.

04 / 08

Why Midnight

Why Midnight?

  • Selective disclosure — prove "this publisher is credentialed" without exposing the credential
  • Compact — ZK circuit complexity abstracted into TypeScript-like code (matters for design-led teams)
  • Dual-ledger model — private witness data stays local, only verified outcome is anchored publicly

This is the exact primitive the problem needs.

05 / 08

Demo

Verified badge, on-chain.

Two posts in a feed. The first carries no verification; the second shows a cyan Vero verified badge, marked with the Vero symbol, reading journalist:accredited.
The reader view, reading live ledger state. No wallet, no account, nothing installed.
  • Registry membership proven — without revealing which credential. Expiry enforced on-chain.
  • Local Midnight devnet · block 5995
06 / 08

Roadmap

Roadmap

Wave 1 · Prove

Aug 27 – Sep 16

  • Concept, personas, competitive landscape
  • Local dev stack operational
  • Compact contract + end-to-end proof flow
  • Merkle registry — one registrar per issuer type, expiry enforced
  • Reader view — badge from live ledger state
  • Contract test suite — 30 tests, no devnet needed
  • Demo video
Wave 2 · Publish

Sep 27 – Oct 17

  • Wallet bridge — prove from the browser (DApp Connector ↔ midnight-js)
  • Public-network deployment, with the reader view hosted
Wave 3 · Harden

Oct 27 – Nov 16

  • Credential revocation — withdraw one without disturbing the rest
  • Governance beyond a single key — multisig or on-chain vote
Beyond · Infrastructure

Future

  • Multiple credential types, verification policies
  • Portable verification across websites and social feeds
  • Browser integrations, APIs
07 / 08

Adoption

Two problems,
not one.

A

Who displays it. Web3-native publishing first — Mirror, Farcaster, Lens already assume a wallet and already publish under pseudonyms. Then individual publications, then the platforms.

B

Who issues it. The same world as A, first. Protocol foundations, ecosystem programmes and developer cohorts already decide who completed a programme and who contributes — Midnight's own Build Club is one. That is participation rather than licence: a different claim, and a different issuer type. Professional bodies follow — journalists' associations, medical councils, orders — publishing a judgement they already make.

  • Why that order: ecosystem issuers and Web3-native publishing are the same population, so the first credential and the first place to show it arrive together instead of waiting for each other.
  • Why before the ecosystem exists: a credentialed source who cannot safely publish under their own name wants this with or without a platform — and generated content made "a credentialed human stands behind this" a signal no checkmark can give.

One registrar per issuer — whoever grants a credential is the only one who can say whether it still holds. The contract has worked that way since Wave 1.

08 / 08

Team

Team

Rafaela Costa

Rafaela Costa

Strategic UX/UI designer & product builder

Vero verified

the one credential in the demo registry — granted by the demo registrar, who is also her

Vero is a trust-signal design problem as much as a cryptography one — what a reader can understand at a glance decides whether any of the proof underneath matters. That is why it is built design-first.

Compact implementation written with AI-assisted tooling (Midnight Expert, Claude Code) and guidance from the Midnight Discord — which is what let a design-led author work at the contract level rather than around it.

Built for the Midnight Buildathon — Wave 1.

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