Recently, the market has been moving sideways, with not many hot topics and retail investor sentiment not particularly exuberant. However, it is often during these "directionless" times that smart money has quietly started to move. Especially in those narratives that have been repeatedly discussed and even once considered "untradeable."

On April 29, 2023, the privacy blockchain 0xMiden officially announced it had secured $25 million in seed funding, led by a16zcrypto, hackVC, and 1kxnetwork, with participation from Finality Capital Partners, Symbolic Capital, and individual investors including Avery Ching (CEO of Aptos Labs) and Rune Christensen (founder of MakerDAO).

0xMiden focuses on the concept of "edge blockchain," aiming to allow applications to choose a public and transparent path when processing transactions, while also being able to switch to privacy mode with one click, achieving privacy protection without sacrificing scalability. The project is incubated and supported by the crypto investment data platform CryptoRank.

Seeing it surrounded by big players in the ZK and privacy narrative, I became curious: what key point has this project hit that has attracted so much capital? How is 0xMiden different from earlier privacy projects like Aztec and Zcash?

To understand this question, we first need to grasp one thing: current blockchains are actually very "non-private," but if you pursue privacy at all costs, you will sacrifice scalability and compliance.

Therefore, although there have been voices in the direction of privacy chains over the past few years, a solution that is "usable, scalable, and not subject to blanket regulation" has yet to emerge.

Now, 0xMiden attempts to restart this difficult problem from a different perspective.

A Privacy Chain That Can Run Without a Network

0xMiden claims to be an "edge blockchain," which sounds a bit like edge computing. The core idea is that smart contracts are no longer entirely computed on the chain; instead, users execute them locally on their devices, package the results into a ZK proof, and then broadcast it to the chain for verification.

In other words, each device acts like a "small blockchain node," performing its own calculations and proving them, only informing the chain of the results for verification. In this model, the chain's role is no longer that of a "laborer," but more like a "referee." If you claim your calculation is correct, you need to provide verifiable proof.

This model has several core changes: all execution is completed locally, significantly reducing the chain's burden and naturally enhancing scalability. The generated ZK proofs are lightweight, unlike the heavy batch proofs of zkRollup, making them suitable for terminal devices. By default, it is private, but developers can choose which computations to make public and which to keep confidential, allowing for flexible switching to adapt to different scenarios.

Ultimately, it aims to create not a large and comprehensive Layer 1, but a new way of interaction between chains and devices, running smart contracts like a portable wallet.

This has some clear distinctions from the currently popular privacy chains on the market. For example, Aztec focuses on "ZK-rollup + encrypted EVM," still rolling up all user transactions for processing, with a centralized sequencer, essentially following a Layer 2 approach. Fhenix uses TEE + homomorphic encryption, leaning more towards hardware trust + encrypted storage, with ZK not being the main focus.

0xMiden, on the other hand, has taken a "ZK-first + local computation" route from a fundamental logic perspective, emphasizing flexibility, lightweight design, and terminal friendliness.

In simple terms, 0xMiden's execution is "decentralized," and it can even execute offline, generate proofs offline, and then upload the results uniformly. Your phone, browser, or AI chip could potentially become small nodes running smart contracts, with ZK ensuring the correctness of calculations while the chain only verifies the results.

Why Are Big Players Willing to Invest?

As early as 2021, a16z invested in the early project of 0xMiden's founder Bobbin Threadbare, which was then part of Polygon Miden. The participation of a16z in this $25 million seed round on April 29, 2025, highlights its long-term confidence in the Bobbin team.

The team behind 0xMiden consists of Bobbin Threadbare, Dominik Schmid, and Azeem Khan, all of whom previously worked in Meta's blockchain team and possess deep expertise in zero-knowledge proofs and blockchain development.

0xMiden was initially developed under Polygon Labs and was spun off as an independent entity on March 31, 2025. This financing is seen as "team restructuring + independent financing." After the spin-off, 0xMiden focuses on Ethereum zk-Rollup privacy solutions, with CryptoRank providing funding and resource support, while technical development is primarily carried out independently by the team.

0xMiden is the third project to spin off from Polygon after Avail and Privado ID. Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal stated in a statement: "It plans to airdrop about 10% of its native tokens to POL holders and stakers, directly rewarding the ecosystem that helps its development."

From an investment perspective, 0xMiden's appeal lies in its ZK local computation model, representing the future trend of ZK. Unlike traditional Rollups, it is not a replacement for chains but is developed as a privacy plugin, providing flexible privacy options.

Project Status

Meanwhile, Miden has already launched practical development tools, allowing developers to start writing real smart contracts, moving away from projects that are merely conceptual. More importantly, its design supports "default privacy with optional public disclosure," providing some leeway in compliance.

The mainnet has not yet launched, but the VM and SDK have already been open-sourced on GitHub. Their roadmap is as follows:

• Miden VM open-sourced (completed)
• Developer toolkit SDK released (completed)
• Testnet launch (expected Q3 2024)
• Mainnet launch (possibly as early as early 2025)

Some developers are already using Miden VM to write demo contracts for scenarios such as local voting, device log verification, and in-game asset operations. However, to truly "break the circle," we may need to wait for a "killer" application scenario like a "local version of Friend.tech" or "AI model operation market."

Why Has the Privacy Blockchain Become Popular Again?

This narrative is not new, but it has indeed seen a resurgence recently, primarily for three reasons.

First, regulatory pressure continues to rise. Globally, regulations on crypto identity and asset flow are becoming increasingly stringent, whether it’s on-chain KYC, wallet blacklists, or exchange compliance, all of which are continuously compressing the space for "absolute anonymity." Instead, the demand for privacy that is institution-friendly, compliant, and controllable is heating up, especially in enterprise-level scenarios where selective privacy has become a necessity.

Second, ZK technology has finally become "usable." In the past few years, ZK was stuck in a phase of "technical showmanship," being expensive, slow, and difficult to develop. However, with the maturation of technologies like STARK and SNARK, the costs of proof generation and verification have continued to decline, transforming ZK from a "theoretical future" into a "practical reality."

Third, the rise of AI blockchain applications has led to more scenarios involving AI computation, data on-chain, and edge inference, expanding the original demand for transaction privacy to "data privacy" and "model privacy."

These applications no longer require "full-chain black boxes," but rather "local computation + selective encryption," which is what is referred to as local privacy.

Meanwhile, established privacy projects like Monero and Zcash, on one hand, only support simple transactions, and on the other hand, are closely monitored by regulators, making the path of "absolute anonymity" increasingly difficult.

Thus, new opportunities have emerged, not to create absolute black boxes, but to pursue "local computation + selective privacy."

Will This Round of Privacy Narrative Start from "Local"?

The direction of privacy chains may not explode in the short term, but it has always lacked a truly operational solution.

While Aztec and Fhenix are still working on "on-chain privacy," 0xMiden aims to bring this narrative to "off-chain" devices, running autonomously, and selectively going on-chain.

This perspective is actually the next natural evolution of ZK and aligns with future trends like "AI + chain" and "data sovereignty." If this story can be convincingly told and the product can truly land, then 0xMiden may become the next "privacy computing infrastructure" worth paying attention to.

Of course, the premise is that it can indeed hold out until the day the mainnet launches.

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