Hoskinson Announces Suburbs for Midnight City

Charles Hoskinson announced Suburbs, a planned developer toolkit for building new sections of Midnight City, during his guest appearance at Midnight Cafe.

Discussions with project teams then connected that expansion to practical requirements for agent identity, financial privacy, and settlement speed.

Suburbs SDK for Midnight City Builders

Suburbs would allow outside teams to build their own parts of Midnight City, a virtual environment for AI agent interactions. Hoskinson targeted availability within six months of the event and named 1AM among the teams planning to participate.

That model raised a question about who shapes the product as outside contributions grow. Using a hypothetical city where third parties build 99% of the space, he described Midnight as a framework for businesses and applications beyond those created by its original team.

AI has accelerated software development, Hoskinson noted, but developers still need to establish whether people would use or pay for their products. He also proposed Ask Bob, a tool for checking whether applications follow privacy best practices.

His account of early crypto gatherings brought that discussion back to the people building them. At his first Bitcoin meetup in a Denver coffee shop, two people signed up and only he arrived. He encouraged attendees to exchange contacts and look for future collaborators among the other builders in the room.

Identity and Insurance for AI Agents

The Agentic Multipass presentation prompted a discussion about insuring autonomous software. The project develops verifiable agent identities and credentials, capabilities Hoskinson connected to conversations in Bermuda about insurance for agent behavior.

Authentication, certification, and defined operating boundaries were necessary components in the approach he outlined. He encouraged the team to explore connections with Midnight Passport, whose planned identity tools combine phone security features, biometrics, and digital services with crypto wallets.

Certification also connected to Midnight City’s proposed marketplace for agent skills. Hoskinson described Nightframe as extending smart contracts through identity, privacy, and selective disclosure. In the skills marketplace, that model would let creators lease capabilities for a specified period or purpose while retaining control over the underlying intellectual property and restricting resale.

Identity verification took on a different role during Eldora’s presentation. The family office asset management platform prompted Hoskinson to recount a conversation with JPMorgan’s private bank about impersonation attempts using cloned voices and videos.

He proposed exploring Passport integration for verifying identity during sensitive financial actions, adding that he wanted the same capability for his own family office.

Private Bitcoin DeFi and Retail Payments

For family offices holding BTC, Hoskinson suggested connecting Eldora with Pogun, a Bitcoin DeFi team, to explore private yield strategies. The proposed model would connect BTC collateral with private stablecoins used in DeFi through Midnight, keeping positions and activities from public view.

He requested further discussions about a combined offering and asked about Eldora’s maturity and support for developers building on its platform.

Settlement requirements formed another part of the discussion. Addressing Collateral Warehouse, infrastructure for managing collateral, Hoskinson asked for concrete performance and cross-chain requirements to inform Midnight’s development priorities. He cited Abyss, whose team had raised settlement times as a reason to consider an additional Layer 2.

Hoskinson suggested his Midnight Express repository as a possible tool for privately distributing trading offers. The discussion also covered selective disclosure of positions to relevant participants.

WEA brought those financial applications into Japanese retail stores. Its team described a payment flow in which shoppers use crypto wallets while merchants retain their existing systems and receive yen.

Hoskinson asked about yen-backed stablecoins and regulation, then discussed an offline payment concept he calls “quantum money,” based on zero-knowledge technology and trusted execution environments. He asked WEA to follow up with his chief of staff so his team could examine its technology and business model.