Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has shed new light on the extensive cross-chain collaboration behind Midnight’s Glacier Drop, highlighting his direct engagement with Ripple’s CTO. NIGHT, the native token of Cardano’s privacy sidechain Midnight, has emerged as one of the most talked-about tokens this month.
Since it began trading on December 9, it has reached a valuation of about $1.59 billion, with each token priced around $0.096. Launched in August 2025, the Glacier Drop spanned eight ecosystems across seven blockchains, including the XRP Ledger (XRPL), Cardano, Solana, Bitcoin, and Ethereum. In a recent commentary, he detailed the broad cross-chain coordination that made the Glacier Drop, the first phase of NIGHT’s airdrop, possible. Although roughly 33 million users qualified for the airdrop, Hoskinson revealed that only about 1.5 million participants ultimately claimed their NIGHT allocation.
Notably, they reached out to Ripple CTO David Schwartz, the original architect of the XRP Ledger. Hoskinson recounted sitting down with Schwartz to gain a deeper understanding of how XRPL functions and how to implement an airdrop of that magnitude. During these discussions, both teams brainstormed practical solutions that ultimately made the NIGHT airdrop possible on the XRP Ledger. Hoskinson noted the Glacier Drop required about 18 months of design work, including direct discussions with Schwartz to ensure XRPL compatibility and to map capabilities across Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, XRP, and Cardano.
The collaboration involved engineers across the ecosystems sharing insights to realize a cross-chain distribution at scale. The efforts encompassed XRPL, Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, and Cardano across multiple teams.
Leave a Reply