Charles Hoskinson says Cardano is getting into a brand new section centered on what he described as a “ChatGPT for privateness,” positioning the Midnight mission as a cross-ecosystem software layer designed to make superior cryptography usable at scale.
Cardano Is Getting into A New Section
Talking in a Dec. 18 livestream titled “Rays of Sunshine in 2026,” the Cardano founder argued that Midnight marks a shift away from incremental efficiency battles towards privacy-first, hybrid purposes that may plug into Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, and past.
“I needed to make a video to speak about the good things and discuss the truth that we’re main the marketplace for the primary time in a very long time,” Hoskinson stated. “And it feels proper. This time actually does.”
The guts of the pitch was that Midnight’s early traction isn’t just a hype spike, however an indication the market is bored with the standard crypto incentive loop and on the lookout for a brand new “paradigm.” “Folks deep down inside, they know {that a} new technology is beginning,” he stated. “We want a brand new paradigm and we have now to have a reset and we have now to launch issues and do issues in another way. They usually’re simply bored with the best way issues have occurred earlier than. They’re bored with it.”
Hoskinson frolicked distinguishing Midnight from the class it should inevitably be filed beneath. “While you checked out Midnight, Midnight isn’t a privateness coin,” he stated. “Midnight is what’s going to allow rational privateness and selective disclosure, however it’s a lot extra. It’s the platform for intents. It’s the platform for hybrid purposes. It’s the platform for capability alternate, for twin tokenomics. It’s the platform for multi-resource consensus.”
He acknowledged the underlying toolkit—“snarks,” “roll-ups,” “recursion and folding”—however argued these buzzwords miss the purpose. “It’s by no means been about roll-ups, recursion, folding, snarks from a scalability perspective,” he stated. “It’s about actual world purposes.” The declare, in his telling, is that Midnight is likely one of the few initiatives positioned to deal with “trillions of {dollars} price of transactions,” exactly as a result of it targets purposes the place selective disclosure and privateness are options, not trade-offs.
To make the case that Midnight is already outperforming comparable narratives, Hoskinson cited market-cap and quantity figures for different ZK and privacy-adjacent initiatives and contrasted them with Midnight’s reported exercise. He cited Starkware at $410 million market cap with $72 million quantity, zkSync at $279 million market cap with $29 million quantity, and Mina at $97 million market cap—earlier than highlighting his personal mission: “Midnight, $1 billion market cap, $1.8 billion buying and selling. It doesn’t even have Binance Spot but.”
A serious cause he believes the market has leaned in, Hoskinson argued, is launch construction—particularly, avoiding the usual concern that insiders will overwhelm liquidity. “They usually stated, nicely, can I consider in it? Is there an ICO? Is there an insider? Who the f*** goes to dump on me?” he stated. “They only gave it away. Eight totally different ecosystems, seven chains. All of the VCs needed in, they received nothing. They didn’t get in. We gave it to the folks.”
He later tied distribution on to noticed buying and selling depth. “Now we have about 1.5 million those that received evening tokens,” he stated. “That’s why the quantity is so f***ing excessive.”
Midnight Is The ‘ChatGPT For Privateness’
For Cardano itself, Hoskinson’s most pointed strategic declare was that “higher, sooner, cheaper” isn’t a sturdy wedge—even when upcoming upgrades land. “Let’s say Leios ships and Hydra ships and we’re higher, sooner, and cheaper. Nice,” he stated. “What cause does somebody have to depart Solana? And what cause does somebody have to depart Ethereum? As a result of the transaction payment is 3% much less. Okay.”
As an alternative, he argued Cardano can win by being first to construct hybrid purposes that route by Midnight and unlock privacy-first monetary primitives. “They might undergo midnight to Cardano they usually get privateness,” he stated. “They do one thing new and totally different […] non-public prediction markets, non-public DEXs, non-public stablecoins.”
He prolonged that pondering to Bitcoin-adjacent flows: “Perhaps simply perhaps all these Bitcoin individuals are going to need to commerce on a non-public DEX as a substitute of a public DEX,” he stated. “And perhaps we’ll have volumes within the billions of {dollars} of turnaround each single day.”
Hoskinson repeatedly returned to a simplifying metaphor: Midnight as an abstraction layer that makes heavy cryptography usable. “All people else will get jealous. In order that they’ll go use Midnight too as a result of it’s the ChatGPT of privateness,” he stated. “Simply ship stuff and stuff comes out.” He later described a product-like cadence of enchancment: “You mainly simply have this API. You ship one thing in, you get one thing again. And each six months it will get higher.”
He additionally framed 2026 as an execution yr, sketching an outward-facing enlargement plan the place Midnight is built-in throughout main ecosystems in tight succession: “We’re going to do Cardano Midnight. Present them the way it’s finished. Then we’re gonna do Midnight Ethereum. Two months later, three months later, Midnight Solana… Midnight Avalanche… Midnight Bitcoin.”
The broader ambition, he stated, is to maneuver crypto previous siloed tribal finance towards one interoperable market. “That is the final technology,” Hoskinson stated. “It’s gonna unify the marketplaces and it’s gonna do away with DeFi and TradFi. And there’s simply going to be Fi.”
At press time, Cardano traded at $0.36.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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