Cardano Enters New Phase, Hoskinson Touts ‘ChatGPT For Privacy’

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

Cardano Is Entering A New Phase

Speaking 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 purposes that may plug into Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, and past.

“I needed to make a video to speak about the good 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 coronary heart of the pitch was that Midnight’s early traction is not only a hype spike, however an indication the market is uninterested in the standard crypto incentive loop and in search of a brand new “paradigm.” “People deep down inside, they know {that a} new technology is beginning,” he mentioned. “We want a brand new paradigm and we have now to have a reset and we have now to launch issues and do issues in another way. And they’re simply uninterested in the way in which issues have occurred earlier than. They’re uninterested in it.”

Hoskinson hung out distinguishing Midnight from the class it can inevitably be filed below. “When you checked out Midnight, Midnight will not be a privacy coin,” he mentioned. “Midnight is what is going to allow rational privateness and selective disclosure, but it surely’s a lot extra. It’s the platform for intents. It’s the platform for hybrid purposes. 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 purposes.” The declare, in his telling, is that Midnight is among the few initiatives positioned to deal with “trillions of {dollars} price of transactions,” exactly as a result of it targets purposes 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 initiatives 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 venture: “Midnight, $1 billion market cap, $1.8 billion buying and selling. It doesn’t even have Binance Spot but.”

A significant purpose he believes the market has leaned in, Hoskinson argued, is launch construction—particularly, avoiding the usual worry that insiders will overwhelm liquidity. “And they mentioned, nicely, 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 completely different ecosystems, seven chains. All the VCs needed in, they bought 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 about 1.5 million those who bought evening tokens,” he mentioned. “That’s why the quantity is so f***ing high.”

Midnight Is The ‘ChatGPT For Privacy’

For Cardano itself, Hoskinson’s most pointed strategic declare was that “higher, sooner, cheaper” will not be a sturdy wedge—even when upcoming upgrades land. “Let’s say Leios ships and Hydra ships and we’re higher, sooner, and cheaper. Great,” he mentioned. “What purpose does somebody have to depart Solana? And what purpose does somebody have to depart Ethereum? Because the transaction price is 3% much less. Okay.”

Instead, he argued Cardano can win by being first to construct hybrid purposes that route by Midnight and unlock privacy-first monetary primitives. “They may undergo midnight to Cardano and so they get privateness,” he mentioned. “They do one thing new and completely different […] non-public prediction markets, non-public DEXs, non-public stablecoins.”

He extended that thinking to Bitcoin-adjacent flows: “Maybe simply perhaps all these Bitcoin persons are going to wish to commerce on a non-public DEX as a substitute of a public DEX,” he mentioned. “And perhaps 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. “Everybody else will get jealous. So they’ll go use Midnight too as a result of it’s the ChatGPT of privateness,” he mentioned. “Just 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 12 months, sketching an outward-facing enlargement plan the place Midnight is built-in throughout main ecosystems in tight succession: “We’re going to do Cardano Midnight. Show 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. “This 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.