Midnight Opens Redemption for 4.5B+ NIGHT Tokens as Cardano Launch Begins

Midnight TGE has opened a major chapter in the rollout of the Midnight Network by launching NIGHT as a Cardano native asset and enabling redemptions for over 4.5 billion tokens claimed during the project’s Glacier Drop and Scavenger Mine phases. The move, which the project said follows one of the broadest and most engaged distributions in recent blockchain history, sets a December 10 redemption start date and marks a visible step toward Midnight’s planned mainnet launch.

The redemption window will begin at 00:00 UTC on December 10, with the official Redemption portal going live shortly beforehand so participants can preview allocations and their “thawing” schedules. According to Midnight’s documentation, claimed allocations will unlock in four equal installments over 360 days. Each recipient’s first thaw date will be randomly assigned inside the initial 90-day window, and subsequent thaws will follow every 90 days, an intentionally staggered release designed to smooth supply as the network progresses from testnet to fully decentralized mainnet.

“This is a pivotal step on the Midnight roadmap,” said Fahmi Syed, President of the Midnight Foundation. “The community will now be able to hold their NIGHT, see their unlock schedules, and prepare to meaningfully participate in a network that’s bringing essential privacy infrastructure to the entire industry.”

Midnight presents itself as a next-generation Layer-1 focused on “rational privacy,” combining zero-knowledge proofs with a tokenomics architecture intended to give users fine-grained control over what data they expose on-chain. NIGHT will serve as the network’s native token for usage, consensus participation and governance.

At mainnet launch, the protocol will also begin generating DUST, a renewable on-chain resource that powers shielded transactions and smart contract operations. Midnight says that DUST is intended to create predictable network capacity while preserving confidentiality for privacy-enhanced transactions without sacrificing auditability.

Community Redemption Underway

The Glacier Drop campaign, an ambitious, multi-phase distribution that ran across multiple ecosystems, paired with the Scavenger Mine event, produced substantial community participation and the claimed token supply is now being readied for redemption. Midnight TGE, the token-generating entity set up to run the distribution in line with the project’s tokenomics, will complete distribution of the remaining supply to the network’s named core constituents as outlined in the tokenomics paper published earlier this year.

Technically, Midnight intends for NIGHT to exist as a single, multi-chain asset: the token’s total supply will be mirrored onto the Midnight ledger when mainnet goes live, and a protocol-level mechanism will ensure tokens can only be fully unlocked on one chain at any given time, an anti-duplication safeguard intended to prevent value from being doubled as NIGHT moves between Cardano and Midnight. The team also said they expect major exchanges, custodians and wallet partners to announce support in the coming days, which would broaden liquidity and accessibility ahead of mainnet.

For claimants, Midnight has published a step-by-step guide to the Redemption portal: participants will be able to check their Destination address, connect a Cardano wallet to the portal or paste addresses manually, and track thawing countdowns. Midnight has emphasized the need for users to have a Cardano wallet with enough ADA to cover transaction fees when claiming, and it has warned users to use only official channels to avoid scams.

The launch of NIGHT on Cardano and the opening of the Glacier Drop Redemption period are explicitly tied to Midnight’s phased approach to decentralization. The team says the staggered thawing was chosen to provide “a clear, resilient and responsible path to decentralization,” giving the ecosystem time to mature while community members gain immediate, managed access to token utility. With the redemption portal and thawing schedule now public, attention will shift to how quickly partners add support for NIGHT and how the token behaves in secondary markets as supply gradually enters circulation.

Midnight TGE and the Midnight Foundation will continue to publish updates through their official channels with detailed instructions about how and when participants can collect NIGHT. As the project moves toward its mainnet milestone early next year, the industry will be watching whether Midnight’s combination of privacy-centred design and an unusual DUST resource model can deliver the predictable capacity and compliance-friendly privacy the team promises.