Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has shed new gentle on the intensive cross-chain collaboration behind Midnight’s Glacier Drop, highlighting his direct engagement with Ripple’s CTO.
NIGHT, the native token of Cardano’s privateness sidechain Midnight, has emerged as one of the crucial talked-about tokens this month. Because it started buying and selling on December 9, it has reached a valuation of about $1.59 billion, with every token priced round $0.096.
Cross-Collaboration Made Glacier Drop a Success
Following its launch, Hoskinson has continued to debate the challenge publicly. In a latest commentary, he detailed the broad cross-chain coordination that made the Glacier Drop, the primary part of NIGHT’s airdrop, doable.
Launched in August 2025, the Glacier Drop spanned eight ecosystems throughout seven blockchains, together with the XRP Ledger (XRPL), Cardano, Solana, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. Though roughly 33 million customers certified for the airdrop, Hoskinson revealed that solely about 1.5 million contributors finally claimed their NIGHT allocation.
He emphasised that the distribution intentionally averted normal crypto launch mechanisms similar to insider allocations or preliminary coin choices (ICOs). As a substitute, each eligible participant had an equal proper of refusal, reinforcing the objective of equity and decentralization.
In accordance with him, the Midnight Basis took roughly 18 months to design the Glacier Drop. The prolonged timeline stemmed from the technical complexity of working throughout a number of blockchain architectures, every with its personal guidelines, tooling, and limitations.
To execute the airdrop appropriately, Hoskinson mentioned he and his crew needed to perceive how every supporting chain functioned. In some circumstances, this meant tackling challenges that had by no means been addressed earlier than.
Working Immediately with Ripple CTO
Notably, Hoskinson cited the XRP Ledger (XRPL) as one of the crucial difficult ecosystems his crew needed to research for the Glacier Drop. He defined that XRPL had by no means supported a distribution of this scale, which pressured the event crew to hunt direct technical steerage.
Because of this, they reached out to Ripple CTO David Schwartz, the unique architect of the XRP Ledger. Hoskinson recounted sitting down with Schwartz to realize a deeper understanding of how XRPL capabilities and how you can implement an airdrop of that magnitude.
Throughout these discussions, each groups brainstormed sensible options that finally made the NIGHT airdrop doable on the XRP Ledger.
UPDATE: #Cardano $ADA Founder Charles Hoskinson says $NIGHT‘s Glacier Drop “took 18 months to design. We needed to name David Schwartz for $XRP. My engineers must know the way Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, XRP, and Cardano works. You discover stuff you want in every ecosystem.” pic.twitter.com/lBJZgBJAyl
— Offended Crypto Present (@angrycryptoshow) December 29, 2025
A Shift in Mindset
Past the technical breakthrough, Hoskinson mentioned the collaboration reshaped his crew’s mindset. He famous that many crypto builders fall into maximalism, focusing solely on their very own networks whereas dismissing others.
Nonetheless, constructing Midnight required Cardano engineers to run nodes and develop throughout a number of ecosystems, together with XRPL, Solana, and Ethereum. By working with totally different blockchains, Hoskinson emphasised that it turns into tough to stay a maximalist, as every community reveals distinctive strengths.
As reported earlier, Hoskinson reaffirmed that the Glacier Drop framework extends past Midnight and serves as a mannequin for launching future initiatives. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that additional refinement is required, including that the crew expects to fine-tune the protocol over the following six months.
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