Tom Humber Outlines Midnight Build Club and Night Sky Programs for Developers

Tom Humber of the Midnight Foundation outlined how Build Club and Night Sky support teams developing privacy-focused applications during a Midnight LIVE event in Singapore.

Build Club works with founders at the idea and proof-of-concept stages, while Night Sky provides direct investment and helps teams integrate technology and raise funding. Humber also introduced ShadowLabz, a Build Club graduate whose private voting tool was used during the event.

Midnight Build Club Takes Early Ideas Toward Demo Day

Build Club is an eight-week program for people exploring privacy-focused applications, including teams with an early concept or a proof of concept.

Participants meet with the program team weekly and receive guidance from mentors inside and outside the Midnight ecosystem. Humber explained that contributors from the Midnight Foundation and Shielded also work with the teams as they develop their projects toward a Demo Day presentation.

The projects he mentioned cover several areas. One participant is building a private launchpad on Midnight, while another is working on agents designed to operate within defined rules. Humber also referred to a team exploring digital product passports for cannabis plants in the United States.

Build Club aims to give participants room to ask questions and work through problems during development. Jay Albert, who supports the program through developer relations and education, described working with teams on shaping ideas, building applications and deploying them to mainnet.

Night Sky Combines Investment With Fundraising Support

Humber also presented Night Sky, an accelerator through which the Midnight Foundation invests directly in teams building privacy-focused applications.

Beyond capital, the program helps participants with their fundraising journey and technology integration. Humber compared Night Sky to Outlier Ventures and explained that Midnight had previously worked with external accelerators but now had the capacity and expertise to run the program internally.

He noted that several teams were already involved, including some represented at the Singapore event. Humber did not disclose the investment amounts or identify the full group of participating projects during the presentation.

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ShadowLabz Used Private Voting at the Singapore Event

Humber introduced ShadowLabz as an example of a team that had completed the first Build Club cohort. The team, whose members came from the XRP Ledger community, had been working to deploy its voting product to Midnight mainnet for the event.

Albert explained that the project grew out of the team’s experience in decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs. Its developers wanted a way for members to vote privately while preserving public verification, addressing the social pressure that can arise when individual votes are visible.

During the event, audience members were invited to scan QR codes and cast private votes as teams presented their projects. Humber encouraged participants to share feedback with ShadowLabz, while Albert described the session as an opportunity to test the product and improve it for future use.