Midnight’s native token NIGHT experienced a sharp recovery after a 25% weekly drop triggered by a Wanchain bridge exploit. On July 21, an attacker drained 515 million NIGHT tokens (worth roughly $13 million) from the bridge connecting Cardano and BNB Chain. The market initially panicked, mistaking the hack for a whale exit, but the Midnight team quickly confirmed that the Midnight chain itself was never compromised.
Major exchanges including Binance, OKX, and Kraken froze the hacker’s wallets and suspended NIGHT deposits and withdrawals, preventing about 225 million of the stolen tokens from entering the open market. This swift action eased selling pressure and allowed the price to bounce back roughly 10% by July 22, with NIGHT climbing from its all-time low to around $0.172.
Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and Input Output Global, reinforced confidence by declaring that Midnight’s fundamentals remain strong and that “huge things” are coming. In a separate statement, he called for a sweeping overhaul of bridge architecture, urging the industry to move toward zero-knowledge proof (ZK) systems to eliminate the reliance on trusted validators that made the Wanchain exploit possible.
Despite the recovery, risks persist. Wanchain has not yet released a full post-mortem, and without a concrete timeline for a ZK-based bridge, the token’s rebound may prove fragile. Technical indicators show momentum improved but not yet in bullish territory, with resistance at $0.175–$0.180. The next few sessions will be critical in determining whether the bounce becomes a sustained recovery or a temporary relief rally.
