Although just a week old, the Midnight (NIGHT) privacy-focused token on the Cardano (ADA) blockchain has already started gaining massive traction.
Namely, as indicated by the latest Cexplorer data on Thursday, December 18, over 133,000 Cardano transactions now contain NIGHT tokens.
Midnight is now the 56th largest crypto in the world according to market cap, worth $1.07 billion at press time.
Trading at $0.06488 at the time of writing, NIGHT is up nearly 2% on the day, and a massive 50% on the weekly chart.
As such, it is one of the dozen or so cryptocurrencies to outperform the market today, outpacing the already established privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) and sitting just behind Monero (XMR), which currently occupies spot number four in terms of 24-hour gains.
Midnight token boosts the Cardano network
Late on December 17, the network founder, Charles Hoskinson, summed up the launch as “incredible success,” adding that he was proud of the community for achieving so much in so little time.
“The launch of NIGHT has been an incredible success. It’s amazing how well the ecosystem is developing and holding up. It’s on its way to be the first true 4th generation cryptocurrency and bring in a new era to our industry. I’m so proud of everyone!” wrote Hoskinson on X.
The launch of Night has been an incredible success. It's amazing how well the ecosystem is developing and holding up. It's on it's way to be the first true 4th generation cryptocurrency and bring in a new era to our industry.
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) December 18, 2025
I'm so proud of everyone!
The unprecedented activity surrounding the NIGHT token is redirecting capital back into the Cardano ecosystem, at one point sustaining over $1 billion in 24-hour trading volume.
Hoskinson’s reaction thus appears to reflect the strength of early network performance rather than short-term price action, and his comments about NIGHT as “the first true 4th generation cryptocurrency” corroborate that.
Positioned as a privacy-focused execution network, Midnight has already produced 2.96 million blocks and processed more than 408,000 transactions, as per the latest figures on Midnight Explorer, with an average block time of approximately six seconds, signaling stable and consistent operation shortly after launch.
With the statistics and Hoskinson’s comments in mind, the “new ADA” label seems fitting, as the ecosystem is on the path to potentially becoming one of the most active recent projects.
Featured image via Shutterstock
