Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. I was supposed to be in Abu Dhabi right now, but unfortunately, I am not. I was on my jet, flying after having severe food poisoning. I was in Las Vegas and ate at Fogo de Chão, and I was the only person there who ate the salad. Later that night, I started violently throwing up. The following morning, I got on the jet with an IV in my arm, trying to get myself good enough to go, shivering uncontrollably and feeling unwell.
We landed in Maine to pick up more fuel, but when we took off, the landing gear wouldn't retract, so it was stuck down. There's no way to fly a jet across the Atlantic Ocean with the landing gear down due to too much drag. Unfortunately, this meant that there was no way to get to Abu Dhabi in time. My apologies to Abu Dhabi Finance Week and everyone involved in that event. We had a lot of wonderful things to discuss, and I regret not being able to make it. The entire team is there, and they're having a lot of fun. I haven't eaten in two days and haven't really slept much either, so I'm a little faded.
I wanted to make a quick video to congratulate everyone on making Midnight a reality. It was a very tough journey. We worked on it for six years, faced many false starts, and had to change the technology a few times. However, we developed a roadmap and a technology stack that we believe will be the tech stack of the future. Midnight is the first fourth-generation cryptocurrency, and there are four phases to this launch. We're currently in the very first phase, and I'm proud that the team was able to deliver this day.
But this is just the beginning of a long and methodical march. There are so many exciting things coming in the next phase, including the launch of the federated mainnet and the incentivized testnet, which will enable hybrid DApps across various ecosystems. The next nine months will be a lot of fun and a lot of work for all of us, but it allows us to introduce new features that have never been seen before in the cryptocurrency space. We're talking about true hybrid applications, true multi-resource consensus, and true post-quantum folding schemes that will advance the state-of-the-art in zero-knowledge stacks. Most importantly, we're creating a natural and easy way for people to regain their privacy.
Midnight is probably the fastest-growing and most vocal project we've ever built because it is so needed by so many people. People are starting to realize that their privacy is not guaranteed and that most systems are designed to take it away. Once lost, it's gone forever. It's nice to have tools to push back rationally, and it's very cool to provide this to every single blockchain in the space.
What makes Midnight special is that it is for everyone. It has equal application for Solana users, Avalanche users, Ethereum users, Binance users, Cardano users, Bitcoin users, and everyone else in between. People will come to realize that the launch today reflects some of the old cynicism and pessimism, as well as the new hope and belief that we can and will do better as an industry. I'm encouraged by the fact that yesterday, Midnight was a hypothetical; today, it's a billion-dollar ecosystem heading toward a $10 billion ecosystem. Right now, it's just a Cardano native token, but tomorrow it will be something bigger and beyond.
Hundreds of ambassadors are coming online, and the Discord is rapidly filling up. There's a translation of everyone who cares about the vision and mission of freedom of association, commerce, and expression. They're coming together to work collaboratively and build new experiences that have never been seen in this industry before. This allows everyone to use whatever currency they want. I don't care if you're an Ethereum user or a Binance user, a Solana user or a Cardano user; all of you deserve privacy in your activities.
The fact that we were able to do this in a completely decentralized way, distributing it to the masses with no ICO, no insiders, and no VC participation gives me hope that crypto is not yet lost. For a long time, crypto has felt and acted like a rigged game. We experienced this firsthand in launching Midnight and the challenges we faced to push it through to this point. But every single user enjoys the fact that it had a fair launch and distribution, with everyone on equal footing through the Glacier Drop, the scavenger hunt, and now the exchange distributions.
What this means is that it's still possible in 2025 to launch a cryptocurrency the way Satoshi did. It's still possible to build something with vision and values where we can do better and not hand the world over to centralized actors and the finance of old. I really enjoy that, and it gives me hope. It reinvigorated me, and despite not eating in two days and not feeling well, I'm still here and fired up. I went straight from the airport to the office, saying, "I have videos to make and emails to send. We don't stop working."
We already have several workshops planned for Midnight's roadmap come January. Yes, the team will take a little time off for Christmas, but some of us won't. Throughout this month, we're going to be pushing the midnight oil to get it done because this is the most important product we can build. It gives all of us, Cardano and otherwise, our privacy back. Next year, we need to get this installed, recognized, and start getting regulations to move in this direction because right now, the laws are being written the wrong way. If the rulemaking is done incorrectly, everything that makes cryptocurrency special will be taken from us.
I don't want to live in a world with only custodial wallets where everyone has to be KYC and AML. I don't want to live in a world where only five or ten protocols are pre-selected and controlled by a small cabal of international bankers. That's not what I signed up for, and it's not what you signed up for. That's not the purpose of this industry. I want to live in a world where the protocols preserve and protect your rights as a human, your agency, and your economic identity.
We put our money where our mouth is, which is why we built Midnight. It was horrendously time-consuming and expensive to reach this moment, but now that we're here, every person can be part of this revolution. The call to action is simple: I want you to join the Discord, become an ambassador, and tell everyone that we can do better. I want you to build on Midnight. I don't care what network you come from; I want you to create something interesting, fun, unique, and different. It could be a game, a new type of NFT, or a new type of memecoin. It doesn't particularly matter. Just build something and show the world that you can create interesting and cool things.
The coming months will move quickly for all of us, but every step of the way, we only earn if we wake up each day and put in the effort. I'm going to try to earn it today, tomorrow, and every day thereafter. We're in it for life. Thank you all for being part of this revolution. Thank you for fighting so hard with each and every one of us. Thank you for getting us to this launch week. It was a good week, a good day, and I'm proud of the Midnight Foundation, the Shielded team, and everyone who worked tirelessly over the past few months to get us here. They put in so much effort, often unpraised and uncertain, but they found a path to get us there, and that's what really matters.
I wish I could tell them they can take a break, but unfortunately, the next 70 days will be pretty tough. We have to keep pushing, but I think everyone wants to, and everyone knows what's at stake. I thank them for their sacrifices and efforts; it means the world to me, and the industry as a whole has shown that it means a lot to them. So, on behalf of the new Midnight ecosystem, thank you, everyone, and good night.
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