Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano (ADA), revealed significant details about the upcoming Midnight sidechain and its Glacier Airdrop during the Consensus 2025 conference held in Toronto. Midnight is a privacy-focused sidechain explicitly developed for the Cardano platform by Input Output Global, designed to enhance data protection by utilizing zero-knowledge cryptography to enable private smart contracts and decentralized applications with selective disclosure.
The Glacier Airdrop will distribute approximately 37 million Midnight tokens, called NIGHT and DUST, to wallets across eight major blockchains: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Cardano (ADA), Ripple (XRP), Solana (SOL), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Avalanche (AVAX), and Polygon (POL). NIGHT tokens are intended for governance and potential network security, while DUST tokens facilitate private transactions.
A key aspect of this airdrop is the exclusion of venture capitalists and insiders, focusing instead on rewarding everyday retail users, which Hoskinson described as a moral and decentralized distribution model opposing "VC Ponzi" schemes. Token recipients will have no restrictions and can trade, hold, or discard the tokens freely.
Midnight’s design promotes cross-blockchain collaboration by allowing developers to pay network fees in their native tokens without requiring token conversion, boosting ecosystem interoperability. The project is currently in testnet phase, with a mainnet launch anticipated in late 2025.
Alongside these developments, ADA’s price has been showing strength, rising roughly 21% in the past week and trading near $0.82, although trading volumes recently declined by over 12%.
The event also highlighted broader industry discussions on regulation, tokenization breakthroughs, and evolving stablecoin mechanisms. Additionally, regulatory progress includes 72 crypto ETF applications currently awaiting the U.S. SEC’s approval, including Grayscale’s proposed Cardano ETF under NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E.