Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson is keen about 2026, suggesting it might be a giant yr for Midnight and the community’s DeFi ecosystem.
The Cardano founder made this daring declare in a latest livestream, excerpts of which have been later shared by well-liked neighborhood figures on the “Indignant Crypto Present.”
Hoskinson stated in his feedback that Midnight, Cardano’s privacy-focused sidechain, “shall be decommissioned subsequent yr,” suggesting he expects the important thing milestone to be achieved in 2026.
Midnight launch underway
Midnight serves as a central pillar of Cardano’s multi-chain imaginative and prescient, offering builders and enterprises with enhanced confidentiality options and programmable privateness. Launched in 2023, the undertaking is now nearing formal deployment, with the launch of the NIGHT token and its first change itemizing beginning on December eighth.
Based on Midnight’s roadmap, the staff plans to debut a federated mainnet by the primary quarter of subsequent yr, permitting builders to begin testing decentralized functions (dApps). Following this part, an incentivized testnet is deliberate for the subsequent quarter, permitting stake pool operators (SPOs) to emphasize check their networks forward of the total mainnet rollout anticipated later this yr.
Laios replace
Hoskinson additionally highlighted the upcoming arrival of Laios, Cardano’s long-awaited scalability improve. Leios, scheduled for launch subsequent yr, goals to considerably improve transaction throughput.
This replace follows his latest announcement of a brand new 24/7 improvement mannequin to speed up work on scalability options. Hoskinson believes Laios is probably the most pressing improve to Cardano. The result’s a 24-hour improvement surroundings that permits groups throughout a number of time zones to work repeatedly to start upgrading subsequent yr as deliberate.
Wonderful advances in Cardano and Midnight DeFi
Moreover, Hoskinson identified that each Midnight and Cardano DeFi ecosystems will make important progress subsequent yr. The prospect of such a improvement excites the Cardano neighborhood, which has been ready for it for a very long time.
JUST IN: #Cardano $ADA Founder Charles Hoskinson stated, “Subsequent yr we’ll see Midnight ruined. Subsequent yr we’ll have Laios. We will see large advances on the DeFi aspect with each Midnight and Cardano.” pic.twitter.com/jV5Nd0FZ5H
— Indignant Crypto Present (@angrycryptoshow) November 30, 2025
On the time of writing, Cardano-based DeFi tasks have a complete of $178 million locked, considerably decrease than rival networks similar to Ethereum and Solana, which boast $65.63 billion and $8.5 billion in TVL, respectively.
Nonetheless, the Cardano staff continues to be engaged on introducing Tier-1 stablecoins to the community to boost DeFi actions. Hoskinson is presently in talks with Ripple executives about bringing RLUSD to Cardano, and reviews say the talks are progressing.
Potential collaboration between Cardano and Base
In the meantime, Hoskinson additionally hinted at the opportunity of cooperation between Cardano and Coinbase’s L2 community Base. His feedback recommend that early talks have already begun and that the 2 sides could search technological or strategic integration sooner or later.
In his view, the Cardano ecosystem gives a number of applied sciences and options that would drastically profit the Coinbase-backed Base community.
