RealFi Will Turn Cardano Into A $1 Billion DeFi Powerhouse By 2026: Hoskinson

Broadcasting on November 11 from “heat, sunny Colorado,” Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson mentioned he expects RealFi to change into the dominant liquidity engine throughout the Cardano–Midnight stack and push on-chain worth to the billion-dollar mark inside the subsequent 12 months. “RealFi would be the TVL monster for Cardano and Midnight alike. Billions and billions of {dollars},” he mentioned, including a concrete goal: “I need a TVL of over a billion {dollars} by the top of 2026.”

How Hoskinson Wants To Achieve A $1 Billion Cardano TVL

The pledge situates RealFi—Cardano’s long-trailed push into micro-lending and real-world credit score rails—because the centerpiece of a broader liquidity plan that spans Bitcoin inflows, privacy-preserving DeFi on Midnight, and trustless cross-chain settlement.

Hoskinson described Midnight as a fourth-generation crypto platform designed for “rational privateness, selective disclosure, and cooperative economics,” positioning it as a impartial L2-to-everyone that routes identification, compliance and privateness logic off-chain whereas settling into whichever networks maintain customers and liquidity. “Midnight’s dream is to be a layer 2 to everybody. You can deploy into Ethereum, you may deploy into Solana, you may deploy into Cardano,” he mentioned.

He tied that structure straight again to ADA demand and stake-pool economics. “Midnight exists as a wise contract on Cardano […] If Midnight is closely used, it creates ADA utilization,” Hoskinson mentioned. Fees could also be abstracted, however “there needs to be ADA on the finish of the rainbow,” with Midnight’s staking paying the Knight token to SPOs on Cardano so “you make ADA and Knight.” He argued this design will increase transaction load on Cardano, broadens listings for Cardano-native belongings, and opens “new income streams for stake pool operators.”

On interoperability, Hoskinson mentioned the ultimate stage of the Midnight rollout features a bidirectional recursive-SNARK bridge with Cardano that removes conventional bridge operators. “On the Cardano facet, we added BLS assist […] each side can have trustless bridging functionality.”

He paired that with efficiency claims—“5,000 TPS and sub-second block time” for the proof-aggregation position—and quick settlement as soon as Ouroboros Peras lands, framing Midnight as a proof engine and coordination layer that may fold the state of linked chains and return constant-size proofs “validated on a cellular phone.”

The liquidity plan extends to Bitcoin and RealFi. On Bitcoin DeFi, Hoskinson mentioned the crew has “been in a position to supply greater than 24,000 BTC” that might transfer, whereas acknowledging the gating gadgets are yield merchandise and finalizing the expertise stack. His RealFi feedback had been unequivocal: the initiative is “going to be an enormous [expletive] factor subsequent 12 months,” with sensible contracts “being written proper now,” and he reiterated the thesis that peer-to-peer micro-lending throughout Africa, South America and Southeast Asia can anchor on-chain credit score flows. “Billions and billions of {dollars},” he mentioned.

Midnight’s go-to-market cadence is constructed round privacy-first DeFi and cross-chain composability. Hoskinson desires privacy-enabled stablecoins and DEXs on Midnight and was express about his distaste for centralized, asset-backed stables: “They will be frozen at any time […] That’s not a cryptocurrency.” He pointed to algorithmic, non-public designs as the popular path and mentioned oracles and bridges will arrive through decentralized integrations slightly than bespoke native rewrites. “When chainlink? […] We can simply use a trustless bridge and proofs and trusted execution environments to ferry the knowledge over.”

He additionally highlighted early traction metrics and neighborhood packages designed to speed up adoption. On Midnight’s scavenger hunt, he claimed “in 21 days, extra compute has been expended […] than the primary few years of Bitcoin,” with detailed numbers promised on the upcoming Midnight Summit close to London. For ecosystem progress, he plans to recruit and pay 500 Midnight ambassadors in 2026, funneling a part of their remuneration into Midnight DeFi and focusing on “a whole bunch of 1000’s of month-to-month energetic customers” and important cross-chain transaction circulation.

The AMA featured an prolonged critique of the Cardano Foundation’s governance and incentive construction, which he argued has impeded essential integrations comparable to stablecoins. “It’s the incorrect construction, incorrect governance, incorrect management,” he mentioned, calling for community-elected board oversight and printed KPIs. He contrasted that with what he referred to as “robust love” for a maturing protocol: “Cardano’s grown up. It must go to school […] You by no means abandon your youngsters. You simply basically change your relationship.”

At press time, ADA traded at $0.59.