Charles Hoskinson used a late-November livestream to argue that, despite recent turbulence, the long-awaited cardano revival is already in motion.
How does Hoskinson see Cardano recovering after the recent crisis?
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson opened his November 25 broadcast by insisting that, despite the recent hack, FBI involvement and social-media uproar, “overall, Cardano is really healthy.” He stressed that the protocol issues from the incident are largely resolved, saying, “we recovered… we’re on the other side of it, we’re in cleanup mode,” and predicted Cardano will “finish pretty strong towards the end of the year.”
He framed the network’s revival around four pillars: the Midnight privacy-focused ecosystem, RealFi lending, a renewed DeFi strategy and a more aggressive scaling roadmap. Moreover, he argued that these initiatives are now moving from theory into implementation, with concrete milestones in late 2024 and into 2026.
Why is Midnight’s Glacier Drop central to Hoskinson’s plan?
At the center of the turnaround narrative is Midnight’s Glacier Drop event. Reading from a “State of the Network” memo prepared by the Midnight Foundation, Hoskinson said the airdrop “was the [largest distribution event in the history] of cryptocurrencies,” adding, “this is not puffery, we have the numbers.” The Scavenger Mine phase closed on November 20 “with over 4.5 billion NIGHT claims registered across more than 8 million participating addresses.”
Hoskinson described Midnight’s architecture as “a new standard for token distribution” that blends “a broad community-driven allocation” with mechanisms “to increase fairness and systemic integrity.” Moreover, he portrayed the design as a template for future Cardano-native launches, particularly where regulatory and governance demands are rising.
The airdrop now moves into a 450-day redemption window starting December 8, during which NIGHT unlocks in four equal installments. A “lost and found” mechanism will let users who later recover private keys still redeem tokens. That said, Hoskinson also presented this as a clear incentive for custodial platforms that hold dormant user balances.
As he explained it, “As Midnight goes up in value, they realize that they can redeem on behalf of their users and do an exchange distribution and take their cut.” According to Hoskinson, Kraken, OKX, Bitpanda and NBX will distribute NIGHT to eligible KYC’d clients, meaning “tens of millions potentially could be viable.” December 8 will also mark the token’s trading debut, which he billed as bringing “tier one listings for the first time ever for a Cardano native asset,” ahead of a federated Midnight mainnet scheduled for Q1.
Can Midnight really reignite Cardano’s stalled DeFi pipeline?
Hoskinson argued that Midnight is designed to do much more than deliver a headline-grabbing airdrop. Instead, he framed it as the practical lever that will unblock Cardano’s long-delayed cardano defi push and force the broader pipeline to advance. Looking back at 2024, he said there were key performance indicators they “hit very strongly,” including launching the on-chain Treasury, making the first Treasury payout and fully decentralising the Constitutional Committee.
However, he acknowledged that the ecosystem “lagged behind in integrations and the growth of the DeFi ecosystem. It just couldn’t get coordinated and done.” With Midnight now in production, he argued that in 2026 “there’s no optionality. It must get done. An exceedingly aggressive organization is basically forcing that to get done whether people like it or not, kicking and screaming.”
He emphasized that the Midnight entity will have a very different posture from the more reserved Cardano Foundation. In his words, “The Midnight Foundation will be an active participant in DeFi, unlike the Cardano Foundation… that alone is going to bring a lot of TVL.” Moreover, he suggested that direct engagement in liquidity and protocol deployment could accelerate network effects in ways Cardano has struggled to achieve so far.
What role will RealFi play in the new strategy?
RealFi is billed as the second engine in Hoskinson’s comeback plan. He highlighted the RealFi lending platform and said it has already issued “over 1 million loans in Kenya and Uganda with my money just to test our credit model and our MFI relationships and how we process these types of things.” These are fast 30- to 90-day micro-loans aimed at real-world borrowers in frontier markets.
Those lending flows, he noted, are now being “translated… into the DeFi world to be launched on Cardano.” Hoskinson predicted that RealFi “is going to be the single biggest driver along with Midnight for TVL and transactions on Cardano in the Cardano ecosystem.” Furthermore, he said RealFi represents “the aggregation of 10 years of careful thinking about how to do” banking the unbanked at scale, turning long-running research into on-chain products.
How is Cardano addressing scaling and the base-layer roadmap?
On the scalability front, Hoskinson said the Leios research and engineering team is “building up faster than any other team we’ve had,” adding, “we got to get Leios out next year, there’s no if, ands, buts about it.” He positioned this as a core pillar of the cardano scaling roadmap, meant to give dapps more predictable throughput and latency at the base layer.
He also pointed out that Hydra is already in mainnet use “with Delta DeFi, the Glacier Drop, Hydra Doom as well as the vending machine project.” According to Hoskinson, IOHK has been meeting with core contributors “about how we can unify the Hydra community and ecosystem together… so we can have dapp-by-dapp acceleration.” Moreover, he suggested that a tighter coordination model could help turn Hydra from a research-heavy project into a more visible scaling solution.
Upcoming work on StarStream, Plutus V4 and Aiken, together with Leios “at the base ledger,” is intended to “speed things up tremendously.” Having “learned our lesson,” he said, future base-layer and L2 components will be co-developed “hand and glove” instead of repeating the long lag that once separated the main Cardano protocol from the hydra layer two framework.
Will Midnight extend Cardano’s reach across chains?
Midnight’s design is also intended to reach far beyond the original Cardano ecosystem. Hoskinson reiterated that “the raison d’être of Midnight is it’s a layer two to everybody,” although he clarified that bridges to external networks will open gradually, roughly every two months. Each new connection is expected to enable “a hybrid dapp” on a separate ecosystem and create “a nice constant news cycle.”
Behind his recent meme exchanges with Solana communities, he claimed, “we’re already talking about Midnight on Solana for privacy for Solana contracts and all types of RWAs,” before adding, “the reality is we’re all friends now.” That said, those collaborations will depend on reliable cross-chain infrastructure, which he said will be rolled out in a deliberate, staged process to reduce risk.
In this context, Hoskinson argued that the Midnight architecture, the Glacier Drop and its redemption flow form the practical backbone for what some community members describe as a midnight cross chain strategy. He noted that each incremental bridge should increase liquidity and developer interest, especially for regulated assets needing privacy-preserving execution.
How do the Midnight Glacier Drop mechanics support long-term growth?
Hoskinson repeatedly returned to the details of the midnight glacier airdrop as an example of how Cardano-aligned projects are maturing. The Scavenger Mine phase alone generated more than 8 million addresses and 4.5 billion NIGHT claims. Moreover, he stressed that the 450-day redemption schedule starting on December 8 is designed to smooth out market impact while rewarding long-term participants.
The “lost and found” redemption path for users who later recover private keys, he argued, aligns incentives among users, custodians and the Midnight Foundation. He suggested that exchanges such as Kraken and OKX will be motivated to reclaim and distribute unclaimed NIGHT balances. That way they can both serve customers and capture a portion of upside as the network grows over 2025 and 2026.
What is next for Cardano in 2025 and 2026?
Looking ahead, Hoskinson tied together Midnight, RealFi and the broader upgrade agenda into a single narrative of recovery. He said that Midnight’s role, RealFi’s on-chain integration and a more assertive DeFi posture are intended to turn the current rally into a durable cardano revival rather than a one-off market bounce.
He linked this to the ongoing plutus upgrade roadmap, including Plutus V4 and tooling such as Aiken, which he expects will lower friction for developers building complex dapps. Moreover, Leios and StarStream are meant to ensure that base-layer capacity does not become the bottleneck it once was, while Hydra continues to provide optional L2 throughput for specific applications.
Hoskinson closed his livestream with a rare personal reflection, acknowledging that 2025 “has been an incredibly, incredibly tough year,” including more than 200 days of travel, four deaths “close to me” and an ongoing struggle with weight and stress. However, he insisted that he is “doing okay” and that enduring those pressures is part of building for the long term.
He argued that the point of the last decade of work is precisely the multi-year revival he now believes has begun. “We can do anything if we put our mind to it,” he said. “We know our KPIs. We know what to do. And we know how to get it done. And we have wonderful products like Midnight to represent that. Lace to represent that. RealFi to represent that. Cardano to represent that.”
At press time, ADA traded at $0.4238, with the token holding a key support zone on the 1-week chart, according to ADAUSDT data on TradingView.com dated 2025.
In summary, Hoskinson’s latest remarks outline a coordinated push around Midnight, RealFi, DeFi integrations and scaling upgrades, all aimed at turning a difficult period into the starting point for a more resilient Cardano growth cycle through 2026.