Charles Hoskinson stated that Weiss has recently significantly increased its ratings and asserted that Midnight will be greater than ZCash, citing reasons such as selective disclosure, private agents, abstraction aimed at mainstream chains and DeFi core, ZK plus TEE plus MPC, and Cardano's all-weather operation layered with Leios. He anchors the timeline to 2027.

Weiss Crypto has listed midnight-3:native as one of the best trades possible in the next 24 months. Hoskinson directly connects this rating change to his product comparison: not a privacy coin with a switch for full privacy, but default verifiable with on-demand disclosure.

Midnight is a partner chain of Cardano, not a layer two, launching its genesis block on March 17, 2026, and opening to the public later that month. The network has its own ledger, consensus, and contract environment, with a dual-token system placing speculative governance on NIGHT and transaction fees on DUST, which requires zero-knowledge proofs to spend.

Hoskinson claims to have personally invested about $200 million, not following mainstream venture capital paths, with tokens distributed to approximately 37 million wallets through airdrops across eight chains. The tech stack absorbs Halo 2 from ZCash, adding trusted execution environments and multi-party computation, aiming for institutional auditability and user default privacy.

He previously stated he would not target privacy fundamentalist users of Monero and ZCash, aiming instead to cover a large audience that "doesn't yet know they need privacy." The product narrative ties private agents with cross-chain abstraction, allowing applications on chains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP to utilize the same privacy core.

Leios supports the throughput story: adding endorsement blocks and committee validation on Ouroboros Praos, with public materials indicating a throughput range of 10 to 65 times; a dedicated public testnet was launched in June 2026, with the goal for the 2026/27 cycle to push implementation to mainnet candidates and pursue hard fork governance, with the mainnet launch date still dependent on governance rather than unilateral announcements.

In market mechanisms, what is bought is a cross-chain core narrative that can simultaneously discuss compliance and privacy, while what is sold is the switch narrative of pure privacy coins. Funds flow in from the ADA ecosystem, NIGHT speculative trading, and transactions driven by ratings; beneficiaries are issuers who can sell selective disclosure to banks and RWA, while pressured are privacy coins that can only maintain premiums through anonymous faith and struggle to access regulated funds. Event-driven factors come from the rating upgrade combined with the 2027 roadmap, rather than a single on-chain settlement.

Source: Public Information