Midnight Launch AAR

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is December 10th. I said Monday was going to be a good day, and it was a good day. We announced all the listings, the big ones, and Midnight launched.

So, it's about time to do a little bit of an after-action review. First, the elephant in the room is how we did, all things considered. It's always a challenging one when you do this kind of stuff. Let me go ahead and share my screen. So, first off, we will do something I almost never do: we'll take a look at the charts.

Right here is the CoinMarketCap for Midnight. Of course, the all-time low is negative 85%, and everybody's already criticizing us. Well, it launched at almost $150, which is just insane. It went way up, and then as soon as it got on Binance Alpha, it dropped all the way down to two cents. They dumped on us; that's what they do.

It's to be expected. Usually, whenever you do an exchange distribution, if people there have no material connection or purpose to it, they just dump the token regardless of the price. They probably didn't even know what Midnight was. Then it kind of reached the floor and was struggling a little bit, and then it started opening up on new marketplaces. If you take a look at the market trading we have here, OKX and Bybit are down here at about 17%.

Here's the interesting part: Mint Swap and Sunday Swap are actually a meaningful percentage of trading volume for the first time ever on any asset in the Cardano ecosystem with respect to large exchanges. We almost have no volume whatsoever on large exchanges, and they are actually doing some trading. We're at about 6.5 cents. I was kind of hoping for around 10 at launch, and I said it's going to be in a band between 5 cents to 15 cents for where we're at inside the market.

The other chart that's pretty impressive, and actually a little more fun, gets me very excited. Let me go ahead and share my screen for you guys on this one. If you take a look at Tap Tools, Midnight is number one right there. It's sitting at an overwhelming level of volume, greater than the volume of every other Cardano native token combined. The makers are just starting to turn on, and trading is just starting to happen.

The FDV is about 1.5 billion, which I think is worth more than all the other CD CNTs combined. So, it's absolutely dominant on the chain, and it shows that Cardano can launch a multi-billion dollar project and get listed on Binance starting with Alpha, and then as the mainnet launches, the other products will follow. Overall, it's a pretty strong launch for the first 48 hours. There's always going to be a big dump in the beginning with an asset like this, a ton of volatility, a lot of wavefinding, and then tranches of liquidity and buy orders come in to offset the sell orders.

The market has to stabilize somewhere. Stabilizing around 5 to 15 cents in that band is very good. It's also important to understand that Japan hasn't started trading yet. That's our bull market, and that starts trading in January. The mainnet hasn't launched yet, and that happens a little bit after January.

So, the big events are backloaded, and the fact that this has come out very strong and is already a billion-plus dollar ecosystem is pretty remarkable. For the first time ever in the history of Cardano, we are seeing decent DEX volume, and we’re actually on all the major exchanges. I'm pretty happy about all that. It's a really good starting point, and all things considered, things are moving in the right direction. More exchanges will come online over the next 60 days, a few more domestic in the US, and then the internationals will start coming online, like Japan and others.

Overall, the story is growing, the message is growing. The whiteboard video has record viewership over 10 million. The Discord is going to start growing dramatically. There’s going to be a large ambassador set that starts getting activated over the next 60 to 90 days. There's a huge workshop coming in January to consolidate the last launch roadmap and the permanent roadmap of Midnight.

We’re going to broadcast that roadmap in Hong Kong alongside all the tier-one partners that we’ve been holding back. We gave you guys some things, and there are a lot of people who are very excited about the integrations. We have some announcements on integrations; tier-one integrations are coming across the board. They’re kind of a necessity, and that’s the whole point of the Pentad. Midnight is the tip of the spear with that.

For a launch in this type of economic condition, this type of year after the October disaster and the markets getting destroyed, I’m pretty happy about that. It’s important to have some comparables inside of the roadmap. One comparable, well, actually, I’ll be nice to them, so I won’t show you guys that chart. But let’s just say we’re in the spirit of cooperation; we want everybody to be successful, and we’re doing better. Overall, in comparables, we’re doing really strong, and the market’s looking pretty good.

The Japanese tsunami is coming, and we have a wonderful, strong launch for phase two of the roadmap planned and ready to go. We’re coding strong, contracts are looking good, redemptions are starting to turn on, and DEX volume is looking good. It’s going to continue to increase. This is finally priming the pump on Cardano DEXes and getting them up to the scale they need. It’s bringing in a lot more stablecoins as well.

Those tier-one integrations are going to come quickly, just in time for all the cool things we’re doing. Overall, it was a pretty good launch, but a tough launch. There were so many things that had to get done, so many things that could have gone wrong. Coming out of the gate with the liquidity we have—$150 million in trading and a market cap FDV of about $1.5 billion—that’s a good start.

Now it’s just all about chopping the wood. We just have to build. Every day, we wake up, keep pushing forward, keep growing the Discord, keep growing the ambassador class, get out the good word, and get the technology turned on. Once those tier-one integrations come in, a lot of cross-chain liquidity will come in, and that’s going to massively benefit Cardano. Congratulations to the entire Cardano ecosystem.

This is the first time in history that Cardano can launch a $1.5 billion product, be listed on Binance Alpha, Kraken, OKX, and everybody else from the start, and push it out. This was the hardest one because all the infrastructure wasn’t there for it, so we had to build it as we went. The next time it goes, it’s all turnkey from here on out. We’ll keep growing, we’ll keep building, and we’re going to march Midnight up as an ecosystem to that $10 billion mark.

That’s the goal. Let’s keep going and get it done. I’ll be real excited to do a Japan tour, a Korea tour, and I’m real excited for Hong Kong. That’s going to be a great moment for everybody. We have a wonderful roadmap discussion about where we’re at today and where we can take this technology over the next three to five years.

What’s really cool about Midnight is that every six to eight weeks, you get a bag of goodies. After we complete the first four phases of the roadmap, every two months, a new ecosystem gets activated because of the hybrid DAP model. You talk about Midnight Cardano, Midnight Ethereum, Midnight Solana, Midnight Avalanche, Midnight Binance. There’s a frenetic pace, a lot of partners, and everybody gets to be homecoming queen for a week and showcase their work. There’s a lot of cool incubation and acceleration to go on as well.

A lot of people are asking how Cardano DAPs get a leg up on their Ethereum counterparts and Solana counterparts. As these tier-one integrations come in, we can start talking to those users naturally, and we have privacy before they do. This gives us a competitive differentiator with Cardano Midnight hybrid applications to offer something to the Ethereum crowd and Solana crowd. That’s really going to help our TVL, MAUs, and transaction volume and give us something new and different to compete with the incumbents. I’m really excited about that prospect, and there are already a lot of Cardano DAPs that are really excited about it.

We’re going to work closely with the top 10 to 15 next year and say, “Hey, let’s get upgrading, y’all. Your users are our users. Your TVL is our TVL. Let’s get it done one way or the other.” I’m pretty happy about where we’re at.

Never kick a gift horse in the mouth. These are good numbers; they’re the best numbers we’ve ever seen in the history of Cardano. They’re only going to improve and grow from here. There’s a lot more we have to do, a lot more growth we need to achieve. The Cardano network handled it, the exchanges handled it, and Midnight is here to stay.

Congratulations to the team and everyone else. As I said, DGENs got a DGEN. The cynical people can be cynical, but all our partners held strong and did what they were supposed to do. You have to survive the dump whenever these things get distributed. The reality is that people have nothing at stake, so no matter what, they sell it and make a profit.

That’s the nature of this game. You’ll see it go high and then go low. It takes 48 to 72 hours for that high volatility to work its way through, then you have a nice set price, and you can build from there. You build a user base, you build liquidity, you build transaction volume, and really start building an ownership society for it. The nice part about the glacier drop model is that you have a gradual thawing, allowing people to make more informed decisions about their expectations for where the ecosystem is going to go.

Every six to eight weeks, you get some nice new cycles that come out. There’s a nice steady emission and a nice steady flow for the system, as opposed to a jagged thing where the insiders all dump. This was just good old-fashioned exchange behavior, which is to be expected. Overall, it was a good day. It was a scary day.

I was traveling most of it, not feeling good from food poisoning. I was kind of pale, thinking, “Oh man, why did it have to be today?” Then there were the jet issues and everything else. But you land, get back to work, and return to the command center in the office. Fami, JJ, and the rest of the gang, Dan and Ryan, are out there in Abu Dhabi, kicking ass and getting things done.

I’d like to thank all of our partners and everyone who was here with us. Thanks to Binance, Kraken, OKX, and all these other guys. They got it done too. It was a lot of work on their side and a lot of work on our side. We just had to figure it out and put those pieces together.

I know that the Midnight Foundation, the TGE entity, and others had to work really hard to get all the logistics and coordination done. Launching is hard because you’re talking to different businesses, different demands, different negotiations, and everybody always starts with the big price and the big ask. Dex liquidity was a hot-button item, but it got done at the end of the day, and that’s a testimony to the professionalism of all the teams involved and the overall thought process of everybody. It was nice to work with professionals and thoughtful people. It was nice to offer the community something.

For the people who held, welcome to the Midnight ecosystem. For those who sold, we’re going to make you regret that in a year. You’ll say, “Damn, a certain friend of mine sold all of his Ether at a dollar.” But that’s the cool part about a consent-driven ecosystem. Everybody was given an opportunity to participate.

Some people said no, some people said yes. For those who said yes, pick up a shovel. We have a lot of work to do. We need to build a giant privacy-preserving ecosystem for everyone everywhere. This is the engine that is going to grow the cryptocurrency space and bring it to the rest of the world.

I’m really excited about where Midnight can go and what Midnight can do. Midnight could not exist without Cardano, and I’d like to thank the entire Cardano ecosystem, from the Cardano Foundation on down, for coming together and helping us get here today. It was a lot of work, and networks like Cardano were built to enable and launch networks like this. Midnight is the first partner chain, and there will be more. Being in the Cardano ecosystem means you get first access and get to be part of all of these new and exciting stories and narratives.

You get a front-row seat to all of that. That’s the purpose of Cardano: to launch these types of things and get them done. A lot of love for everybody on that side of the aisle and really cool stuff for everyone on that side of the aisle. Midnight, as a Cardano native asset, has to live the same experience as SNEK, USDM, and all these other guys. We have to work hard to make that experience better for us and thus for them.

Those integrations are coming, and better wallet support is coming. There’s an enormous amount of progress to be made in the next five to nine months, I’d say. A whole bunch of announcements are coming, and the Pentad structure is going to work hard, lockstep, to make sure these things get improved. It’s going to bring a lot of value to the ecosystem as a whole and to the rest of the cryptocurrency industry. We did it again.

We proved that not only can Cardano launch a $1.5 billion asset on day one that can get listed on tier-one exchanges, but we also proved that we can still innovate and leapfrog the rest of the competition. Midnight is one of the most advanced products ever built in the history of our industry, and it came from this side of the aisle, not others. This time around, we gave it to everybody, and we didn’t make it personal. The whole point of Midnight was it was a gift to the industry as a whole.

I’m real excited to see where this is going to go and how everybody can work with us. There’s no more football spiking; there’s just back padding. We’re going to have a lot of fun bringing each other up and talking each other up, getting things done. Thanks to everybody who made this happen. Thanks to all the partners, all the service providers, all the exchanges, the people at the Midnight Foundation and Shielded, the people in the Cardano ecosystem, and the Cardano DAP providers.

Big shout out to all the engineers, especially those outside of Input Output who came in as contractors and worked tirelessly. Thanks to people in Input Output, especially in Input Output engineering, who did amazing work. Thanks to the glacier drop team who worked 24/7 for the last few months to get all this done. Thank you to all of you who participated in the glacier drop and the scavenger hunt. Thank you so much to Google Cloud for all the help they provided, and thanks to Azure and all the others for their assistance.

It was a lot to get us here and get this done, and this is just the first phase. It was the easiest phase. Phase two is going to be exponentially harder, but we’re ready for it. We’re fired up. We ate our Wheaties; we’re ready to go.

We’ve got fire in our belly and passion in our hearts. This is just the beginning. 2026 is going to be a good year, not just for us, but for the industry as a whole. Let’s go. We aren’t done; we’re just getting started.

We had high expectations for 2025, but those came from a place of thinking somebody else was going to do the job. We thought the US government was going to show up and make our lunch for us. The only reason crypto works is that we make our own lunch; we make our own destiny. 2026 is going to be a return to first principles for us as an industry. This is the first time since Bitcoin that a launch has been done the way Midnight did it.

It was complete retail, completely fair, and none of those VCs got their grubby hands on it. Instead, it went right to you, the people. The people are going to make it great. That’s what has always made crypto great: the great retail army that has come together and said they want something different. They want to push power to the edges and don’t want some centralized entity telling them what their life is going to be and whether they’re going to be rich or poor.

We all want our destiny back. It’s nice that in 2025, we got started a little earlier on 2026, and the new theme is a return to first principles. It’s about time we get back to where we started because we know that place we saw about where everything else could go. It’s going to be a good year, not just for Midnight, but for everybody with a fair launch and a fair distribution, for everybody with a deflationary monetary policy like Bitcoin, Cardano, and Midnight, because there’s a fixed supply for Midnight, by the way. It’s going to be a good year for everybody who’s betting on you, the consumer, and not betting on the banks and all these other actors who always, at the end of the day, leave you at the altar and let you down.

I’m really excited about that too. It’s a newfound passion, newfound fire. We’re done chasing name brands and prestige. We’re just getting back to work and getting it done. We have a lot of growing to do, a lot of integrations to complete, a lot of TVL to build, a lot of transactions to build, and a lot of MAUs to build.

We have some new DAPs and experiences, some brand new things to do, and we’re doing it with an army. Anyway, that was a great AR. Thank you, guys. I’ll see you soon. Cheers.