Congratulations Midnight

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny—sometimes Colorado. I was supposed to be in Abu Dhabi right now, but unfortunately, I am not. I was on my jet, flying, and I actually had severe food poisoning. I was in Las Vegas, ate at Fogo de Chão, and I was the only person there who ate the salad.

Later that night, I started violently throwing up. The following morning, I got on the jet with an IV in my arm, trying to get myself good enough to go, shivering uncontrollably and coming out of both ends. We landed in Maine to pick up more fuel, and when we took off, the landing gear wouldn’t retract, so it was just stuck down. There’s no way to fly a jet across the Atlantic Ocean with your landing gear down; there’s too much drag. Unfortunately, this meant there was no path to get to Abu Dhabi in time.

My apologies to Abu Dhabi Finance Week and to everyone else involved in that event. We had a lot of wonderful things to talk about, and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it. The entire team is there, and they’re having a lot of fun. I haven’t eaten in two days, and I haven’t really slept much either, so I’m a little faded. But I wanted to make a video quickly to talk to all of you and congratulate everyone on making Midnight a reality.

It was a very tough journey. We worked on it for six years, faced many false starts, and had to change the technology a few times. But we got to a roadmap and a technology stack that we feel is going to be the tech stack of the future. Midnight is the first fourth-generation cryptocurrency, and there are four phases to this launch. We’re in the very first phase, and I’m very proud that the team was able to deliver this day.

But it’s just the beginning of a long and methodical march. There are so many cool things coming with the next phase, where we turn on the federated mainnet and the incentivized testnet, and then turn on everything to begin the hybrid DApps with each ecosystem. The next nine months are going to be a lot of fun and a lot of work for all of us, but it allows us to bring new things that have never been seen before in the cryptocurrency space: true hybrid applications, true multi-resource consensus, and true post-quantum folding schemes that will advance the state-of-the-art of all the zero-knowledge stacks. Most importantly, we’re creating a natural, easy way for people to get their privacy back. Midnight is probably the fastest-growing and most vocal project we’ve ever built because it is so needed by so many people.

People are starting to realize that their privacy is not a guarantee and it’s not a given. Most of the systems around us are designed from the ground up to take your privacy away, and once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. It’s nice to have some tools to push back in a rational way, and it’s very cool to have something that provides this to every single blockchain in the space. What makes Midnight so special is that it’s for everyone. It has equal application to Solana users, Avalanche users, Ethereum users, Binance users, Cardano users, Bitcoin users, and everyone else in between.

People will come to realize that the launch today was a good reflection of some of the old cynicism and pessimism, as well as the hope and belief that we can and will do better as an industry. I’m very encouraged by the fact that yesterday, Midnight was a hypothetical. Today, it’s a billion-dollar ecosystem heading to a $10 billion ecosystem. Right now, it’s just a Cardano native token, but tomorrow it’s going to be something bigger and beyond. Hundreds of ambassadors are coming online, and the Discord is rapidly filling up.

There’s a translation of everyone who cares about the vision and mission of freedom of association, commerce, and expression. They’re coming together so we can work together and build new experiences that have never been seen in this industry before. It allows everybody to use whatever currency they want. I don’t care if you’re an Ethereum user or a Binance user. I don’t care if you’re a Solana user or a Cardano user.

All of you deserve to have some privacy with what you do. The fact that we were able to do this in a completely decentralized way, distributing it to the masses with no ICO, no insiders, and no VC participation gives me hope that crypto is not yet lost. The reality is that crypto has long felt and acted a rigged game. We experienced it firsthand in launching Midnight and the difficult things that had to be done to push it through to get to this point. But every single user enjoys the fact that it had a fair launch and a fair distribution.

Every person was on equal footing through the Glacier Drop, the scavenger hunt, and now the exchange distributions. What that means is it’s still possible in 2025 to launch a cryptocurrency the way Satoshi did it. It’s still possible to build something with vision and values where we can do better and not hand the world over to centralized actors, the finance of old. I really enjoy that, and it gives me hope. It reinvigorated me, and despite not having eaten in two days and not feeling so good, I’m still here and fired up.

I went straight from the airport to the office and said, “I got some videos to make, got some emails to send. We don’t stop working. We’re not going to stop working.” We already have several workshops planned for Midnight’s roadmap come January. Yes, the team will take a little bit of time off for Christmas, but some of us won’t.

All throughout this month, we’re going to be pushing the midnight oil and getting it done because this is the most important product we can build. It’s what gives all of us—Cardano and otherwise—our privacy back. Next year, we have to get this installed, get this recognized, and start getting regulations to move in this particular direction because right now, the laws are being written the wrong way. If the rulemaking is done incorrectly, every single thing that makes cryptocurrency special will be taken from us. I don’t want to live in a world that only has custodial wallets where every single person has to be KYC and AML.

I don’t want to live in a world where only five or ten protocols are pre-selected and basically controlled by a small cabal of international bankers. That’s not what I signed up for. That’s not what you signed up for. That’s not the purpose of this industry. I want to live in a world where the protocols preserve and protect your rights as a human, your agency as a human, and your economic identity as a human.

We put our money where our mouth is, which is why we built Midnight. It was horrendously time-consuming and expensive to get to this moment. But now that we’re here, each and every person can be part of this revolution. The call to action is pretty simple: I want you to join the Discord, become an ambassador, and tell everyone that we can do better. I want you to build on Midnight.

I don’t care what network you come from; I want you to build something interesting, fun, unique, and different. It could be a game, a new type of NFT, or a new type of memecoin. It doesn’t particularly matter. Whatever it is, just build something and show the world that you can do interesting and cool things. The coming months are going to move really fast for all of us, but every step of the way, we only earn if we wake up each day and put in the effort and time.

So, I’m going to try to earn it today, tomorrow, and every single day hereafter. We’re in it for life. Thank you all for being part of this revolution. Thank you for fighting so hard with each and every one of us. Thank you for getting us to this launch week.

It was a good week, a good day, and I’m proud of the Midnight Foundation. I’m proud of the Shielded team. I’m proud of every single person who worked tirelessly over the past few months to get this over the line. They put in so much effort, often unpraised and uncertain, but they found a path to get us there, and that’s what really matters. I wish I could tell them they can take a break.

Unfortunately, the next 70 days are going to be pretty tough, so we have to keep pushing. But I think everybody wants to, and I think everyone knows what’s at stake. I thank them for their sacrifices and the efforts they put in. It means the world to me, and the industry as a whole has shown that it means the world to them. So, on behalf of the new Midnight ecosystem, thank you, everyone, and good night.