Three quick updates to make sure your work is visible, counted, and recognized as part of the Midnight ecosystem.
Why this matters
Midnight is approaching mainnet. The ecosystem already has hundreds of active developers building with Compact, deploying on Preprod, and shipping real applications. But activity that isn't attributed doesn't get counted, and that invisibility has real consequences for the ecosystem you're helping to build.
Establishing a clear public record of development activity ensures that the broader blockchain industry recognizes the growth of Midnight Network. Accurate attribution is a functional necessity for the ecosystem and establishes a standardized framework for documenting technical contributions.
The attribution process
Electric Capital produces the most widely cited developer report in blockchain. Investors, protocols, and media use it to understand which ecosystems are growing, which are stagnant, and where to pay attention. Their methodology is public: they track GitHub commits, contributor counts, and repository metadata across every major blockchain ecosystem. If your repo doesn't have the right metadata, their tooling won't associate it with Midnight, regardless of how active or high-quality the work is.
Midnight is submitting its ecosystem map to Electric Capital for the first time, ahead of mainnet. This is a one-time window to establish a credible public record of where the ecosystem stands from day one. Developer counts from the weeks surrounding a mainnet launch are captured in a rolling window that informs how new ecosystems are ranked and covered. Ecosystems that show up in that window with strong numbers get recognized. Ecosystems that don't, start from a deficit they spend months correcting.
Compounding developer results
The changes below take under five minutes per repository. They are small, permanent, and consequential. Beyond writing code, implementing these metadata standards is a high-imact action for ecosystem growth. Every repo that completes them is a developer who gets credited for building on Midnight.
| TL;DR: Midnight's developer ecosystem is real and growing. These three steps make sure that growth is visible to the tools and reports that the wider industry pays attention to. |
|---|
Step 1: Add GitHub topics
GitHub topics are how Electric Capital (and other ecosystem trackers) programmatically identify which repos belong to which ecosystem. Without them, even actively maintained repos are invisible to the tooling.
To add topics to your repository:
Go to your repository on GitHub
In the right-hand sidebar, find the About section
Click the ⚙️ gear icon next to it
In the Topics field, add the relevant topics from the table below
Click Save changes
| Topic | When to use |
|---|---|
midnightntwrk |
Required for all Midnight ecosystem projects |
compact |
Add only if your project uses the Compact language |
Do not use:
midnight,midnight-network,midnight-compact, ormidnight-ecosystem. These variants are not tracked and will not associate your project with the ecosystem.
Step 2: Add one attribution sentence to your README
Electric Capital's tooling scans README files for signals that confirm a repo's relationship to an ecosystem. One sentence, placed near the top of your README, is sufficient. Please use exact wording from the table below. Customising the phrasing means the automated system may not recognize it.
| Your project type | Attribution sentence |
|---|---|
| dApps, contracts, or tooling that run directly on Midnight | "This project is built on the Midnight Network." |
| SDKs, infrastructure, wallets, or services | "This project integrates with the Midnight Network." |
| Developer tooling, frameworks, or libraries | "This project extends the Midnight Network with additional developer tooling." |
Step 3: Open a PR to the Awesome dApps list
The Midnight Awesome dApps list is the community-maintained directory of ecosystem projects. Opening a PR adds your project to that record and makes it discoverable by other developers, partners, and the teams evaluating the ecosystem.
Submit your project at: github.com/midnightntwrk/midnight-awesome-dapps
Earn Zealy points while you're at it!
Each of the three steps above has a corresponding quest on Zealy. Complete them to earn points and appear on the Midnight ecosystem leaderboard. Links to the three quests are below.
Quest 1: Add the midnightntwrk GitHub topic
Three steps, once per repo, permanent record
These changes don't affect how your code works. They affect how your work is seen. Midnight's first public developer count will be used in every industry report, investor briefing, and ecosystem comparison that references the network for years to come. Your repo being in that count matters.
Questions? Find us in the Midnight Discord in #dev-chat, or reply to this post.
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