Hoskinson: Cardano’s Midnight will overtake Zcash, Monero and Dash in 12 months
- Cardano founder Hoskinson claims that Midnight will overtake Zcash, Monero and Dash within 12 months.
- Midnight is intended to combine privacy and compliance via selective disclosure and run as an additional layer on existing chains.
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson kicked off his Japan tour with a midnight event on January 25th in Sapporo (Hokkaido).Workshop opened and announced that Midnight would become the leading privacy project in the crypto sector within a year.
Hoskinson positions Midnight as a bridge between privacy and compliance, with selective disclosure rather than a public data trail. Hoskinson’s core thesis is that the crypto industry has so far primarily built “the transparent side”, but not the private side, which is essential for real business processes.
“We only built one side of Yin and Yang. We only built the transparent side. We didn’t build the private side.”
Cardano/ Midnight Vs. Zcash, Monero und Co.
His point is less about technology than control: In many privacy systems it is difficult to control in a granular manner what is disclosed to whom and when. Regulation, he says, should not become permanent transparency: KYC/KYB/AML must be possible without personal data being visible to everyone.
His argument: As long as compliance on public chains means making personal data public, this is not acceptable for companies. He puts it drastically:
“If you share information about yourself on a public network, anyone in the world can […] see where you live, your name […] how much money you earn […] That doesn’t make any sense for trading.”
For Hoskinson, this is a structural advantage of Midnight: Midnight should integrate privacy-enhancing technology in such a way that compliance is possible without the user being doxxed globally. He calls the lack of privacy and disclosure foundations “one of the biggest barriers” why crypto is not yet anchored in everyday life everywhere.
Hoskinson also explained that Privacy Coins were built by engineers without a consistent focus on UX; Mainstream products would need “abstraction” and “intents”, i.e. the ability to give the system only one goal while solvers/networks optimize execution.
His bet is go-to-market: Midnight should not displace L1 as the new, but rather dock as an additional layer where users and liquidity already are. He points out that “11 million tokens” failed in 2025 alone and that large VC-funded launches achieved “no adoption.” At the same time, he describes Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Cardano as particularly suitable because communities and capital do not simply migrate there.
Midnight should therefore not start as a replacement, but as an additional shift:
“You stay on Solana […] but it works on Midnight. You stay on Cardano […] works on Midnight. You can spend Bitcoin […] but it works on Midnight.”
Midnight wants to bring privacy functionality to where users and liquidity already are, rather than requiring migration. Technically, he sells Midnight as a best-of approach: Polkadot as the basis, supplemented by ideas from Aptos, Zcash and Near – without ideological overhead. Finally, Hoskinson makes the comparison explicit over the time horizon:
“Within a year, Midnight will surpass everyone in the privacy space because we know how to solve these problems.”
BREAKING NEWS
MIDNIGHT WILL ECLIPSE EVERY PRIVACY PROJECT WITHIN A YEAR
@IOHK_Charles says within a year, Midnight is going to eclipse anybody in the privacy space because we know how to solve these problems. pic.twitter.com/fCiP2RD0dz
— Mintern (@MinswapIntern) January 26, 2026
Hoskinson also referred to his team’s expertise: “Because we hired 168 scientists who have dedicated the last four decades of their lives to this goal. One of the developers wrote the first online computer game. He was at Stanford when the Internet was built there […]. He programmed Pong, the first online game. […] He’s working on it, as is the 22-year-old graduate student, the developer here in Japan, and everyone else involved. That’s why we’re going to win,” said Hoskinson.
The Cardano founder also makes it clear how Cardano will benefit. Although Cardano has decentralization and governance, the DeFi ecosystem does not apply. Midnight is intended to give Cardano applications that “Solana apps don’t bring or Ethereum applications don’t bring”: products like “a private DEX” or “a private prediction market” or “a private stablecoin”. This is exactly what Cardano is supposed to draw relevance and users from.
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