Peluncuran mainnet tengah malam: Pendiri Cardano bertaruh 200 juta untuk revolusi privasi kripto

Founder of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, supported privacy blockchain Midnight officially launched its mainnet on March 30. This is the fourth-generation blockchain infrastructure he personally funded with approximately $200 million. After launching through an airdrop to 37 million wallets, its valuation once exceeded $1 billion and is currently about $776.2 million.

Midnight’s Design Philosophy: Addressing Three Core Obstacles to Widespread Crypto Adoption

Hoskinson believes that for more than a decade, cryptocurrency has been unable to achieve mass adoption for reasons that are not rooted in regulation or market volatility, but rather in deeply entrenched user experience problems. In an interview, he said: “The question I’ve been asking for eight years is: why hasn’t a revolution happened?” His diagnosis points to three core flaws: excessive complexity (users need to manage private keys), excessive transparency (every transaction can be traced), and the risk of irreversible losses.

“The last mile is simplicity, privacy, and rules,” Hoskinson said. “Without these, blockchains will continue to be rejected by the real world.”

Midnight’s “selective disclosure” mechanism is its core innovation: users don’t need to hand over sensitive data; instead, they answer validation questions for “yes” or “no” in an encrypted way, completing on-chain proof of identity or eligibility without exposing underlying personal data. The vision described by Hoskinson is even more ambitious: “You don’t need to understand how cryptocurrencies work to use them. You just click your mouse, complete identity verification, and it will work normally.”

Midnight’s Four Key Points in Technical Design

Selective disclosure: Encrypted verification responds to yes/no questions without exposing underlying personal data

Hybrid privacy model: Some data remains private, while other data can still be verified when necessary, eliminating the traditional trade-off dilemma between privacy and verifiability

No private key design: Users don’t need to manage private keys, eliminating the risk of permanent asset loss caused by operational mistakes

Dual token system: NIGHT token is used for governance and security (speculation side); DUST token is used to pay transaction fees (utility side)

Airdrop Launch, Bank Adoption, and Market Valuation

Unlike most crypto projects that rely on venture capital, Midnight is funded entirely by Hoskinson and launched distribution through one of the largest airdrops in the industry—already covering 37 million wallets across 8 blockchain networks at launch. The market reaction was swift; valuation once exceeded $1 billion, and the current trading price of the NIGHT token is close to $0.047.

For commercial deployment, Monument Bank, headquartered in London, announced plans to tokenize up to 250 million pounds ($330 million) of retail deposits on the Midnight blockchain, becoming one of the first examples of a regulated bank using public blockchains while maintaining compliance protections.

Midnight’s early use cases include confidential financial products (enterprise payroll systems running on-chain without exposing payrolls), identity verification (verifying users without storing personal data), and enterprise data workflows. Hoskinson emphasized that Midnight doesn’t compete with Bitcoin or Ethereum; instead, it serves as a complementary infrastructure, filling structural gaps in the existing crypto ecosystem around privacy and usability.

FAQ

What is Midnight, and what is its relationship with Cardano?

Midnight is a privacy-oriented sidechain built on Cardano. It inherits Cardano’s underlying infrastructure and adds selective disclosure mechanisms and a hybrid privacy model. Cardano currently ranks 12th globally by market capitalization, at about $9.2 billion, while Midnight is the specific implementation of Hoskinson’s defined “fourth-generation blockchain.”

How do the functions of the two tokens NIGHT and DUST differ?

NIGHT is the main tradable token used for governance participation and network security staking; DUST is a utility token dedicated to paying transaction fees. Separating the two makes the network’s usage cost more predictable, and also creates possibilities for applications to represent users in paying fees, lowering the operational barrier for typical users.

Why is Monument Bank’s case on Midnight considered an important milestone?

Regulated banks typically find it difficult to use public blockchains due to privacy, compliance, and cybersecurity considerations. Monument Bank plans to tokenize 250 million pounds of retail deposits on Midnight and achieve on-chain operations while maintaining regulatory protection. This is an early, important validation case for Midnight’s design claim of “privacy and verifiability in harmony.”