Eight Straight Days of Gains Midnight's native token, $NIGHT, has extended a remarkable run, rising for eight consecutive days and gaining as much as 86% over a seven-day stretch. The token c
Midnight's native token, $NIGHT, has extended a remarkable run, rising for eight consecutive days and gaining as much as 86% over a seven-day stretch. The token climbed from a low of $0.022 on September 24 to a high of $0.048 on October 1. The move stands out in a broader market where many assets faced selling pressure, with Cardano itself dropping more than 3% over the same period.
$NIGHT is the native and governance token of the Midnight Network, a blockchain that uses zero-knowledge (ZK) smart contracts to enable programmable privacy.Built on Cardano, Midnight uses zero-knowledge proofs to offer data privacy for institutional use.
The catalyst is a concrete development roadmap. Midnight Foundation CTO Sebastien Guillemot (@SebastienGllmt) confirmed that the project's v8 release will enable private smart contracts on mainnet. He expressed excitement about private smart contracts, which include the ability to mint private custom tokens.
Midnight Node 1.0.3 was released on September 26, which Guillemot described as the final major technical update required before smart contract deployment goes live. A further Midnight Node 1.0.4 update is expected shortly as development continues.
Looking further ahead, Guillemot distinguished the private contract release from composability, which Midnight plans to introduce through its following v9 upgrade.The v9 composability upgrade is planned for Q4 2026 and will enable contract-to-contract calls and account abstraction, alongside infrastructure designed to support shared liquidity and more complex applications. Guillemot indicated the v9 upgrade could still arrive before year end.
Initially, only a few decentralised applications on Midnight, such as AscendPerps, were whitelisted and allowed to run in a gated environment. The latest update means that smart contract support will be available for anyone to experiment with and deploy.
The broader privacy narrative appears to be adding momentum. Midnight has seen sharp intraday gains driven by a privacy narrative, institutional tokenization news, and a technical breakout, with traders rotating into privacy themes and anticipating upcoming upgrades.
Sources:Bitbase: Cardano's Midnight (NIGHT) Jumps 86% as CTO Teases Major UpgradeCoinTurk: NIGHT doubles in eight-day rally as Midnight's smart contract rollout advancesMidnight Network: What is the NIGHT Token?
