Midnight’s Fahmi Syed Addresses Banking Privacy and Public Blockchain Infrastructure at SALT London

Fahmi Syed, president of the Midnight Foundation, addressed the role of programmable privacy in modern banking during SALT London 2026, where financial institutions and blockchain leaders gathered to discuss the infrastructure supporting digital financial markets.

Syed appeared alongside Monument Bank founder Mintoo Bhandari on November 4 for a panel titled Building the New Banking Rails: Improving Capital Efficiency With FinTech. The discussion brought together representatives from banking, blockchain infrastructure, and investment firms to examine how emerging financial technology could improve capital efficiency while meeting institutional requirements.

Why Public Blockchain Transparency Presents Challenges for Banks

Public blockchain networks such as Ethereum and Solana allow participants to verify transactions through shared infrastructure. However, their transparent transaction records can expose financial relationships, transaction amounts, and patterns of activity that regulated institutions may need to protect.

In a short video excerpt shared by Midnight, Syed raised the question of keeping information confidential on public blockchain networks. His remarks connected privacy with the ability of businesses to protect commercially sensitive information while maintaining trust with their customers.

For banks, the issue extends beyond personal data protection. Financial institutions must safeguard customer relationships, investment positions, and internal business information while retaining the ability to provide records to regulators, auditors, and other authorized parties.

Traditional private databases provide controlled access but do not offer the same open participation and interoperability associated with permissionless blockchain infrastructure. Midnight's proposed approach seeks to combine these characteristics without requiring institutions to publish sensitive financial activity.

How Midnight Combines Programmable Privacy With Financial Compliance

Midnight is designed to support applications that separate publicly verifiable information from data that must remain confidential.

Its architecture uses zero-knowledge cryptography, allowing an application to prove that specific conditions have been satisfied without disclosing all the underlying information. In financial services, this could support verification of transaction requirements or customer eligibility while limiting exposure of associated records.

Selective disclosure introduces another distinction. Rather than making information universally public or permanently inaccessible, applications can be designed to disclose specific data to authorized parties under defined conditions.

This does not mean that every Midnight transaction automatically satisfies financial regulations. Institutions remain responsible for establishing appropriate identity verification, recordkeeping, access controls, and compliance procedures within their applications.

The approach described by Syed reflects Midnight's broader institutional strategy: enabling financial products to operate on shared blockchain infrastructure while giving businesses control over the information disclosed through their services.

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Monument Bank's £250 Million Deposit Plan Provides a Banking Use Case

The Midnight Foundation's existing partnership with Monument Bank provides a concrete example of how this architecture is intended to operate.

The UK-regulated digital bank announced plans to tokenize up to £250 million in interest-bearing retail deposits on Midnight. Each token would represent an equivalent amount held at Monument, with deposits remaining redeemable in British pounds and subject to the applicable protections of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.

The initiative is structured around three phases. The first involves representing customer deposits on Midnight while keeping transaction information confidential between the bank and its customers. The second would introduce tokenized investment products, including exposure to real-world assets managed by established investment firms, through Monument's existing banking application.

A third phase is intended to support Lombard-style lending, enabling eligible customers to borrow against investments without selling the underlying assets. The bank also plans to keep blockchain operations largely behind its existing customer interface, avoiding the need for users to manage digital assets directly.

The project has faced implementation challenges. Earlier reporting identified delays involving institutional custody arrangements and UK regulatory requirements, with Monument subsequently targeting November for its initial rollout.

Syed's SALT London appearance did not confirm that the planned deposits had already been tokenized. The £250 million figure remains the announced target for the first phase, which is designed to introduce confidential digital representations of regulated bank deposits on Midnight.