Charles Hoskinson has revealed new developments for Cardano’s upcoming privacy-focused sidechain, Midnight, together with an enormous multi-chain airdrop initiative aimed squarely at retail customers.
Talking at Consensus 2025 in Toronto, the Cardano founder introduced that Midnight will distribute two new tokens—NIGHT (for governance) and DUST (for personal transactions)—to over 37 million wallets throughout eight main blockchain ecosystems, together with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Cardano itself. Notably, enterprise capitalists shall be completely excluded from the airdrop.
In a departure from typical token launches, the Glacier Drop will keep away from institutional allocations, as a substitute rewarding solely on a regular basis customers, who may have full management to commerce or maintain the tokens post-distribution.
Midnight, at the moment in its testnet section, is predicted to go reside in late 2025. The sidechain is designed not simply to reinforce privateness but additionally to encourage interoperability by permitting builders to pay charges utilizing native tokens from different chains, reminiscent of BTC or ETH—eliminating the necessity for wrapped belongings or conversions.
By aligning incentives throughout ecosystems, Midnight goals to function a collaborative layer for cross-chain improvement whereas preserving transactional privateness.
