Hi, this is Charles Hoskinson broadcasting live from warm, sunny Colorado. Always warm, always sunny, sometimes Colorado. Today is January 22nd, 2026. It's hard to believe January is almost over. It's been a very fast month and a very fast year. We're getting a lot done, having a lot of fun, and really enjoying the year. It's been nice to be off Twitter for 22 days and focus on first principles.
Tomorrow, I'm getting on a plane to Japan, flying commercial in solidarity with everyone else. We're going to arrive and embark on the Japan tour, which will take us to several places: Sapporo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Naha, and Tokyo. We'll be traveling all the way from Hokkaido down to Okinawa, covering the entire Japanese archipelago. We'll be discussing Midnight, what it is about, why it exists, and getting people excited about its future. This tour will last about two weeks, filled with travel, fun, and excitement. I'm thrilled to share all of this with the Japanese community.
As many of you know, Japan is why Cardano exists. There would be no Cardano without Charles, and there would be no Cardano without Japan. I went to Japan in 2015, and with our partners from Emergo and others, we traveled across Japan and convinced them that Cardano needed to exist. They provided the funding, we built it, and the Japanese community remains the largest and strongest Cardano community in the world, holding more than half the supply.
We need to address what Midnight is and where Cardano stands. This will be an update on the relationship between Midnight and Cardano, diving into the details of what can be built and how to bring different industries into the Midnight ecosystem. This includes intellectual property, fintech, and even the vice industries, exploring how they can benefit the Cardano ecosystem.
Around the middle of this year, I will aggressively push for the top 15 Cardano DApps to undergo a retrofit overhaul and receive additional resources. Currently, we are delivering on the Pentad, and we have some great announcements coming soon about commercially critical integrations that I think people will be very happy about. I can't disclose them until everything is finalized, but we're getting close to settling a lot of long-standing issues.
A natural question arises: where do we take the Pentad structure next? I believe the best direction is to focus on the DeFi ecosystem and the Cardano DApp ecosystem, asking how we can make those DApps more competitive. How do we 10x their monthly active users, total value locked, and transactions? We need to get them listed on major exchanges and ensure they reach their potential.
Midnight will be an indispensable component in this effort. It's not enough to make them better, faster, and cheaper; DApps must offer new features. By combining Cardano technology with Midnight technology, we can provide privacy to the masses, competing with Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and others. My hypothesis is that this will attract many transactions, value, and users, especially as these DApps can now upgrade to the new commercially critical infrastructure, including new bridges, stablecoins, and oracles.
We'll also discuss the executive function with the Japanese community—where we're going and how we'll supercharge the Cardano ecosystem. The base infrastructure is working well. We have Laos on the way, and Hydra is already looking good with projects like Delta DeFi and Sam's vending machine. We're starting to see the fruits of our labor materialize, but we still have a way to go. Just because we have great roads doesn't mean anyone will drive on them; they need a reason to do so, which must come from a robust DApp and DeFi ecosystem.
The reason Midnight exists is to bring privacy to the world. The first wave of applications best positioned to take advantage of this are those closest to Midnight—Cardano. In addition to introducing Midnight and our plans for chain abstraction, intents, wallet abstraction, smart compliance, and unifying all privacy-enhancing technologies into a cohesive stack, we'll also discuss the future of Cardano and Midnight.
If you want to register, please do so. If you're in Japan and want to see me in person, here's the link. I'd love to meet you. We'll be visiting various cities: Sapporo in the north, Osaka and Fukuoka in the west, Naha, and ending in Tokyo. Shortly after Tokyo, I'll head to Hong Kong for Consensus, where I'll be keynoting alongside many exciting people. We have some big announcements for Midnight and some significant partners that we're thrilled to have as part of the mainnet launch.
I invite everyone in the area to come down. The Japanese community will be there, and we've already set up many VIP dinners with some OGs from 2015. I'm excited to engage with Midnight and hopefully get them involved. There are also many Japanese companies I'd love to bring into the Midnight orbit. Midnight is an excellent platform for intellectual property, GameFi, and finance. The ability to transition from Cardano to Midnight or from legacy finance to Midnight or Ethereum to Midnight is incredibly exciting.
I'm looking forward to talking to Japanese companies while we're there and reconnecting with the Japanese community. I haven't been to Sapporo since 2015, so it will be great to be up there and have fun with everyone. Traveling to Okinawa will also be exciting. Japan is a big place with a big heart, and it is the most critical component of the Cardano ecosystem. Its support has been vital and will continue to be so. Midnight's success is closely tied to their belief in us and our growth in that part of the ecosystem. I believe we can achieve this and get people very excited.
This will be one of my last major trips of the year. I'm currently in builder mode, writing code and documents like crazy. I don't want to travel right now, so I've been selective with my time. The most important thing this year is to go to Japan and welcome them to Midnight. The second priority is to ensure that the Midnight mainnet launches on time, with our launch partners activated and providing a wonderful experience. We need to ensure high usage and utility of the network, and we must help Cardano applications upgrade to access these capabilities so they can attract millions of new customers from Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and other spaces, increasing total value locked, transaction volume, and monthly active users on Cardano.
We're working hard on this, and it's great to have so many good friends. I want to thank all the ambassadors in the Japanese community and all the Cardano community members who helped us put this together on short notice. We made it happen, and I insisted we do it in January instead of waiting until April. I'll be in Japan for two weeks, and despite a recent gout attack that's left me walking with a cane, I believe I'll be okay in a few days. Regardless of the challenges, we'll power through.
Thank you all for listening. I'll see you in Japan and Hong Kong. Cheers!
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