Cardano (ADA) Promises Biggest Comeback This Year with Incoming Midnight Airdrop

After hints of a brewing partnership with Ripple, the chain's founder, Charles Hoskinson, confirmed an incoming airdrop to mark the arrival of the Midnight

Cardano (ADA) is known for its impressive yearly comebacks, and this year seems to be no different. As rumors of a partnership with Ripple heat up, the chain’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, has confirmed an incoming airdrop to celebrate the arrival of the Midnight sidechain.

The airdrop will be held on nine blockchains, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ripple, Solana (SOL), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Avalanche (AVAX), and Polygon (MATIC). It will also be distributed on Cardano’s native chain and two other chains. The event will see the distribution of the Midnight sidechain’s governance token, NIGHT, and DUST, a privacy transaction token designed to enhance user privacy further.

Midnight is designed to boost efficiency, security, and cost-effectiveness at the Cardano network at the smart contract execution level. It features “chain abstraction,” which allows users from different blockchains to interact with Midnight and its associated tokens without needing conversion.

During his announcement, Hoskinson also touched upon the development process of blockchain tech, which he says includes the following phases:

• Unfunded and unmaintained community projects written in low-level programming languages;

• Funded projects with small teams;

•, large teams and large institutions get involved; and

• The tech gets used by billions of people daily.

According to him, Cardano is currently in the fourth phase, where large teams and large institutions are getting involved in developing the chain.

The news comes after speculations about a huge partnership announcement between Cardano and Ripple. XRPL’s inclusion in the Midnight sidechain appears to be only the tip of the iceberg, as Cardano is rumored to be ironing stronger ties with Stellar (XLM) and further ironing out integration with the Bitcoin ecosystem.

In November 2024, Hoskinson confirmed a meeting with John McCaleb, former Ripple CTO and Stellar’s developer. He declined to offer more information about the matter. Still, the rumor mill has it that Cardano was tapping McCaleb’s ties with Ripple to start talks about merging some Cardano projects within the XRP ecosystem and Ripple USD (RLUSD) stablecoin cross-border payment systems.

Last week, the topic intensified as Ripple released its new ad centering on tokenization. Interestingly, attentive observers immediately noticed that the video started with a coin bearing the logo and label of Cardano. Although the ad never mentioned Cardano or ADA past its three-second introduction, it left the ADA, XRP, and broader crypto community to speculate what may be in store for them from these two powerhouses in the digital assets sector.