Japan Tour

Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Today is January 22nd, 2026. January is almost over; it's been a very fast month in a very fast year, and we're getting a lot done and having a lot of fun. It's nice to be off Twitter for 22 days and focus on first principles. I'm getting on a plane tomorrow, flying over to Japan, flying commercial in solidarity with everyone else.

We're going to arrive and start the Japan tour, which will take us to Sapporo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Naha, and Tokyo. We're going to travel all the way from Hokkaido down to Okinawa, covering the entire Japanese archipelago. We'll be talking about Midnight and all the exciting developments surrounding it. What is Midnight about? Why does it exist?

We want to get people very excited about the future of Midnight. This tour will last about two weeks, filled with travel, fun, and excitement. It's wonderful to share all of this with the Japanese community. As many of Japan is why Cardano exists. There would be no Cardano without my connection to Japan.

I visited Japan in 2015, and with our partners from Emergo and others, we traveled across Japan to convince them that Cardano needed to exist. They provided the funding, we built it, and the Japanese community remains the largest and strongest Cardano community in the world, holding more than half the supply. We need to discuss what Midnight is, where Cardano is at, and the relationship between Midnight and Cardano. We want to delve into the details of what can be built and how we can bring different industries into the Midnight ecosystem, whether it's intellectual property, FinTech, or even the vice industries. How do these sectors integrate into the Midnight ecosystem, and how do they benefit the Cardano ecosystem?

This year, I plan to aggressively push for the top 15 Cardano dApps to undergo a retrofit overhaul and receive additional resources. Currently, we're delivering on the pentad, and we have some great announcements coming soon about commercially critical integrations. I think people will be very happy with these developments, but I can't disclose them until everything is finalized and inked on paper. A natural question arises: where do we take the pentad structure next? In my view, the best direction is to focus on the DeFi ecosystem and the Cardano dApp ecosystem.

We need to ask how we can make these dApps more competitive, how to increase their monthly active users, total value locked, and transactions, and how to get them listed on major exchanges. Midnight will be an indispensable component in this effort. It's not enough to make them better, faster, and cheaper; the dApps must offer new features. By combining Cardano technology with Midnight technology, we can provide privacy to the masses, which will attract a lot of transactions, value, and users. These dApps will be able to upgrade into the new commercially critical infrastructure, including new bridges, stablecoins, and oracles.

We will also discuss the executive function with the Japanese community—where we are going and how we will supercharge the Cardano ecosystem. The base infrastructure is working really well. We have Leos on the way, and Hydra is looking good with projects like Delta DeFi and Sam's vending machine. We're starting to see the fruits of our labor materialize, but we aren't quite where we need to be yet. Just because we have great roads doesn't mean anyone will drive on them; there must be a reason for users to engage with the dApp and DeFi ecosystem.

The reason Midnight exists is to bring privacy to the world. The first wave of applications best positioned to take advantage of this will be Midnight's closest neighbor, Cardano. In addition to introducing Midnight and discussing chain abstraction, wallet abstraction, smart compliance, and the unification of all privacy-enhancing technologies into a cohesive stack, we will also talk about the future of both Cardano and Midnight. If you want to register, please do so. If you're in Japan and want to see me in person, here's the link.

I'd love to meet you. We will be in various cities: Sapporo in the north, Osaka in the west, Fukuoka, and then we'll end in Tokyo. Shortly after Tokyo, I will head over to Hong Kong for Consensus, where I will be keynoting alongside many exciting people. We have some significant announcements for Midnight and some big partners that we're thrilled to have as part of the mainnet launch. I invite all of you in the area to come down.

The Japanese community will be there, and we already have several VIP dinners set up with some OGs who have been around since 2015. We aim to get them excited about Midnight and encourage their participation. There are also many Japanese companies I would love to bring into the Midnight orbit. Midnight is one of the best platforms for intellectual property, GameFi, and finance. Being able to transition projects from Cardano into Midnight or from legacy finance or Ethereum into Midnight is incredibly exciting.

I'm looking forward to working with everyone to solve their problems. It will be great to engage with Japanese companies while we're there, and I'm excited to reconnect with the Japanese community. I haven't been to Sapporo since 2015, so I’m looking forward to having fun with everyone. Japan is a big place with a big heart, and it is the most critical component of the Cardano ecosystem. Midnight's success is tied to their belief in us and our growth in that part of the ecosystem.

I believe we can get people excited about it. This is one of the last major trips I will take this year. I'm currently in builder mode, writing code and documents like crazy. I want to be selective with my time, and I believe the most important thing this year is to go to Japan and welcome them to Midnight. The second most important task is to ensure that the Midnight mainnet launches on time and that our launch partners are activated on time, providing a wonderful experience.

We need to ensure high usage and utility of the network, and we must help Cardano applications upgrade to utilize these capabilities so they can attract millions of new customers from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and other spaces. We are working hard on this, and it's encouraging to have so many good friends supporting us. I want to thank all the ambassadors in the Japanese community and all the Cardano community members who helped us put this together on very short notice. We made it happen, and I insisted we do it in January rather than waiting until April. I'll be in Japan for two weeks, and despite a recent gout attack that has me walking with a cane, I believe I'll be okay in a few days.

Regardless of the challenges, we'll power through. Thank you all for listening, and I'll see you in Japan and Hong Kong. Cheers!