Midnight

NIGHT was minted as a Cardano native asset on November 25, 2025 and launched December 4. It could trade and begin its redemption schedule while Midnight was still approaching mainnet. The Midnight genesis block arrived March 17, 2026 at 03:17 UTC; production launch followed March 30.

This sequence explains the Cardano relationship. NIGHT’s authoritative initial issuance and distribution contracts lived on Cardano, but Midnight is an independent layer-1, not a rollup. Its blocks and transactions do not settle one by one to Cardano.

A Compact program separates public ledger values from witnesses and private state held locally. A zero-knowledge proof lets the network accept a valid state transition without learning every input. That supports selective disclosure: an application can prove a condition while withholding the underlying record.

NIGHT itself is unshielded and transferable. After a holder registers it, the balance generates DUST toward a designated Midnight address. One NIGHT can currently support up to five DUST over seven days, while used DUST is burned and unused excess can decay.

DUST cannot be transferred as money or paid to a validator. Its only protocol role is transaction capacity. Sponsorship separates action authorization from fee provision, letting an app cover a user’s DUST without owning the user’s keys or NIGHT.

The design reduces direct exposure of fee metadata, but it does not make the whole system anonymous. NIGHT balances and Cardano registration links can be observed, and a poorly written application can disclose private inputs.

Glacier Drop took a June 11, 2025 snapshot of ADA, BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, BNB, AVAX and BAT holders. The design offered 50% of claimable supply to Cardano participants and 20% to Bitcoin participants. After Glacier Drop and Scavenger Mine, realized claims totaled about 4.5474 billion NIGHT.

The May 2026 final table looks different from the opening invitation: Foundation 35%, Reserve 25%, claimed users 18.9475%, TGE 15.25%, Treasury 5%, Lost-and-Found 0.8025%. Foundation and TGE together control 50.25% and had no protocol lock from December 10, while users thaw through four 25% releases.

All 24 billion NIGHT are represented on both Cardano and Midnight, but a unit unlocked on one ledger is locked on the other. The intended invariant is effective unlocked supply no greater than 24 billion, not two independent supplies.

Mainnet did not finish the bridge story. Cardano-to-Midnight transfer was staged first, and reverse transfer awaited further cross-chain observability. Third-party wrapped versions do not inherit the underlying token’s DUST and governance utility automatically.

AURA selects the current permissioned producer; GRANDPA finalizes blocks. Launch documents cap the initial federation at 13 and assign no block rewards yet. The Foundation says it runs two nodes and contracts and pays the other operators.

Protocol and Cardano-side parameter changes pass through two bodies: at least 6 of 9 Technical Authority members and 4 of 6 Council members. Their scope includes membership, block producers, hard forks and ledger parameters.

NIGHT voting, on-chain Treasury spending and Reserve rewards are later decentralization phases. Until those mechanisms ship, token distribution and operational control remain separate facts.