Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Proposes Integrating Midnight With Bitcoin And XRP Ledger

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has pitched integrating his latest project, the Midnight Protocol, to blockchains such as Bitcoin and the XRP Ledger.

In a Dec. 27 X post, Hoskinson argued that the privacy-focused platform’s zero-knowledge proof architecture could enhance the capabilities of those competing blockchains rather than displace them. 

Midnight Could Help XRP Challenge Legacy Banks, Achieve Satoshi’s Vision For Bitcoin

Hoskinson said that integrating the Midnight protocol with the XRP Ledger would give the network the computational capabilities needed to challenge legacy banks by enabling private, compliant decentralized finance (DeFi).

He added that Midnight could also help make Satoshi Nakamoto’s decentralization vision for Bitcoin possible.

“Adding Midnight to XRP DeFi is going to blow the legacy banks out of the water. Adding Midnight to Bitcoin gives the world Satoshi imagined possible,” he said on X. 

Turning his attention back to the Cardano network, Hoskinson added that Midnight could help boost the network’s monthly active users and the total value locked (TVL) on the blockchain by broadening the ecosystem’s utility beyond its native chain. 

This attempt to position Midnight as a cross-chain, interoperable privacy solution for competing blockchains marks a shift for Hoskinson, who has historically focused on building within the Cardano ecosystem. 

Hoskinson Criticizes Legacy Finance For Using Canton Network

While championing Midnight on X, Hoskinson has also taken aim at legacy financial institutions who are going after the $10 trillion RWA market by partnering with the Canton Network, which is a permissioned blockchain. 

He argued that the Canton blockchain and other partial solutions fall short of what institutional adoption requires. 

“There are no half measures or half technologies. You need an end-to-end strategy, great partners, and great communities,” he said. 

According to the Cardano founder, the XRP Ledger and the Midnight Protocol are already operating at a scale “100x” beyond what legacy institutions aim to build. 

NIGHT Rebounds From Support And Now Nears Key Resistance

Cardano started rolling out the Midnight Protocol on Dec. 8, with the blockchain expected to reach full decentralization through a four-phase roadmap that will conclude in Q3 2026.

The privacy platform’s token, NIGHT, launched on the Cardano network on Dec. 4. Interest around the token has soared, which saw the altcoin overtake crypto market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum on CoinGecko’s trending list on Dec. 26. 

4-hour chart for NIGHT/USD (Source: GeckoTerminal)

In the past few days, NIGHT’s price has also entered into an ascending channel after rebounding from the $0.07036 support. Now, the crypto is attempting to challenge the $0.09131 resistance. 

Breaking above that technical barrier could lead to a climb to as high as $0.10932. Conversely, a rejection from the resistance might result in a drop to the nearest support at $0.06970.

Looking at technical indicators on the 4-hour chart shows that momentum and strength currently favors bulls.

The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) line is above the MACD Signal line, which suggests that buyers have more momentum than sellers. Additionally, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is above the neutral 50 mark at 59, indicating that bulls are stronger than bears. 

NIGHT’s price also has the support of the 9 and 20 Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs), which are currently pushing the token’s value up.