Cardano Enters New Part, Hoskinson Touts ‘ChatGPT For Privateness’

Charles Hoskinson says Cardano is getting into a brand new part centered on what he described as a “ChatGPT for privateness,” positioning the Midnight challenge as a cross-ecosystem utility layer designed to make superior cryptography usable at scale.

Cardano Is Coming into A New Part

Talking in a Dec. 18 livestream titled “Rays of Sunshine in 2026,” the Cardano founder argued that Midnight marks a shift away from incremental efficiency battles towards privacy-first, hybrid functions that may plug into Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, and past.

“I wished to make a video to speak about the great things and discuss the truth that we’re main the marketplace for the primary time in a very long time,” Hoskinson mentioned. “And it feels proper. This time actually does.”

The guts of the pitch was that Midnight’s early traction isn’t just a hype spike, however an indication the market is bored with the same old crypto incentive loop and in search of a brand new “paradigm.” “Folks deep down inside, they know {that a} new technology is beginning,” he mentioned. “We want a brand new paradigm and we’ve got to have a reset and we’ve got to launch issues and do issues in a different way. And so they’re simply bored with the way in which issues have occurred earlier than. They’re bored with it.”

Hoskinson hung out distinguishing Midnight from the class it can inevitably be filed below. “Once you checked out Midnight, Midnight isn’t a privateness coin,” he mentioned. “Midnight is what’s going to allow rational privateness and selective disclosure, however it’s a lot extra. It’s the platform for intents. It’s the platform for hybrid functions. It’s the platform for capability alternate, for twin tokenomics. It’s the platform for multi-resource consensus.”

He acknowledged the underlying toolkit—“snarks,” “roll-ups,” “recursion and folding”—however argued these buzzwords miss the purpose. “It’s by no means been about roll-ups, recursion, folding, snarks from a scalability perspective,” he mentioned. “It’s about actual world functions.” The declare, in his telling, is that Midnight is without doubt one of the few tasks positioned to deal with “trillions of {dollars} value of transactions,” exactly as a result of it targets functions the place selective disclosure and privateness are options, not trade-offs.

To make the case that Midnight is already outperforming comparable narratives, Hoskinson cited market-cap and quantity figures for different ZK and privacy-adjacent tasks and contrasted them with Midnight’s reported exercise. He cited Starkware at $410 million market cap with $72 million quantity, zkSync at $279 million market cap with $29 million quantity, and Mina at $97 million market cap—earlier than highlighting his personal challenge: “Midnight, $1 billion market cap, $1.8 billion buying and selling. It doesn’t even have Binance Spot but.”

A significant cause he believes the market has leaned in, Hoskinson argued, is launch construction—particularly, avoiding the usual worry that insiders will overwhelm liquidity. “And so they mentioned, effectively, can I consider in it? Is there an ICO? Is there an insider? Who the f*** goes to dump on me?” he mentioned. “They simply gave it away. Eight totally different ecosystems, seven chains. All of the VCs wished in, they obtained nothing. They didn’t get in. We gave it to the folks.”

He later tied distribution on to noticed buying and selling depth. “We have now about 1.5 million those that obtained night time tokens,” he mentioned. “That’s why the quantity is so f***ing excessive.”

Midnight Is The ‘ChatGPT For Privateness’

For Cardano itself, Hoskinson’s most pointed strategic declare was that “higher, quicker, cheaper” isn’t a sturdy wedge—even when upcoming upgrades land. “Let’s say Leios ships and Hydra ships and we’re higher, quicker, and cheaper. Nice,” he mentioned. “What cause does somebody have to go away Solana? And what cause does somebody have to go away Ethereum? As a result of the transaction price is 3% much less. Okay.”

As an alternative, he argued Cardano can win by being first to construct hybrid functions that route by means of Midnight and unlock privacy-first monetary primitives. “They may undergo midnight to Cardano they usually get privateness,” he mentioned. “They do one thing new and totally different […] non-public prediction markets, non-public DEXs, non-public stablecoins.”

He prolonged that considering to Bitcoin-adjacent flows: “Perhaps simply possibly all these Bitcoin individuals are going to wish to commerce on a personal DEX as a substitute of a public DEX,” he mentioned. “And possibly we’ll have volumes within the billions of {dollars} of turnaround each single day.”

Hoskinson repeatedly returned to a simplifying metaphor: Midnight as an abstraction layer that makes heavy cryptography usable. “Everyone else will get jealous. So that they’ll go use Midnight too as a result of it’s the ChatGPT of privateness,” he mentioned. “Simply ship stuff and stuff comes out.” He later described a product-like cadence of enchancment: “You mainly simply have this API. You ship one thing in, you get one thing again. And each six months it will get higher.”

He additionally framed 2026 as an execution yr, sketching an outward-facing growth plan the place Midnight is built-in throughout main ecosystems in tight succession: “We’re going to do Cardano Midnight. Present them the way it’s performed. Then we’re gonna do Midnight Ethereum. Two months later, three months later, Midnight Solana… Midnight Avalanche… Midnight Bitcoin.”

The broader ambition, he mentioned, is to maneuver crypto previous siloed tribal finance towards one interoperable market. “That is the final technology,” Hoskinson mentioned. “It’s gonna unify the marketplaces and it’s gonna eliminate DeFi and TradFi. And there’s simply going to be Fi.”

At press time, Cardano traded at $0.36.

Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

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