Charles Hoskinson is promoting his latest project, Midnight Protocol, claiming it is more than just a sidechain for Cardano.

Instead, the founder of Cardano positions this privacy-centric platform as a shared infrastructure layer that can extend programmable privacy to competing blockchain networks, including Bitcoin and XRP Ledger.

Hoskinson goes beyond Cardano, launching a cross-chain privacy strategy
On December 27th, via X, Hoskinson believes that Midnight’s zero-knowledge proof architecture can enhance the capabilities of the competitive ecosystem rather than replace them.

He said that integrating Midnight with XRP Ledger would enable the network to challenge traditional banking systems by implementing private, compliant decentralized finance. He also extended this argument to Bitcoin, stating that Midnight offers programmable privacy features that Bitcoin currently lacks.

Hoskinson also frames Midnight as a catalyst for Cardano. He believes the protocol can help boost Cardano’s monthly active users and total value locked by expanding the ecosystem’s use cases beyond its native chain.

“Midnight makes things it touches better. Introducing Midnight into XRP DeFi will completely disrupt the traditional banking landscape. Bringing Midnight to Bitcoin will realize Satoshi’s dream of the future. Integrating Midnight into Cardano will greatly enhance our DeFi ecosystem and enable us to lead large-scale private DeFi, thereby increasing monthly active users, transaction volume, and total value locked by 10 times,” he claims.

Beyond interoperability, Hoskinson points out the huge opportunities in real-world asset tokenization. He states that the estimated $10 trillion real-world asset market will benefit from Midnight’s privacy-preserving design.

In this context, he criticizes traditional financial companies for continuing to collaborate with... Canton Network, a permissioned blockchain, arguing that partial solutions are insufficient to meet institutional adoption requirements.

“There’s no middle ground, no half-baked technology. You need an end-to-end strategy, excellent partners, and a strong community,” Hoskinson said.

This strategy marks a shift in Hoskinson’s approach, who previously focused on development within the Cardano ecosystem.

By promoting Midnight as a privacy layer, Hoskinson is seeking to access liquidity and user bases outside the existing Cardano network to strengthen other Layer-1 blockchains.

This shift coincides with growing speculative interest in Midnight’s native token, NIGHT.

Data from CoinGecko shows that the asset recently surpassed Bitcoin and Ethereum in search volume on the platform’s trending lists.

However, the token has already been traded. Since its launch earlier this month, the high volatility has caused the price to drop over 80%, to $0.08, according to BeInCrypto data, as of press time.