Charles Hoskinson (찰스 호스킨슨), Cardano’s founder, said the growth of the privacy-focused network Midnight should be seen as ecosystem expansion rather than competition with Cardano.

Hoskinson named Midnight the Cardano ecosystem’s biggest project and dismissed the view that resources poured into it would undermine ADA’s value, blockchain outlet The Crypto Basic reported on Nov. 10. He said NIGHT was deployed using Cardano technology and requires a Cardano wallet to hold. He said NIGHT holders are currently connected to the Cardano ecosystem.

Hoskinson said Cardano was designed from the start as a platform to support the building and growth of large projects. Since a platform’s capabilities are proven by the applications and networks running on it, he argued that if Midnight grows into a multibillion-dollar project it could also demonstrate Cardano’s commercial potential.

Midnight’s network activity is expanding quickly. It surpassed 1 million mainnet transactions in October and completed a hard fork earlier this month to raise its ledger version to 9 from 8. The upgrade included feature expansion and security improvements.

Attention is turning to what impact that growth will have on the value of NIGHT and ADA. Asked whether Midnight could record a bigger market capitalisation than Cardano over the long term, Hoskinson replied that the possibility was 충분하다고.

The gap between the two assets is currently large. Based on CoinMarketCap, NIGHT is about $0.0426, with a market capitalisation of about $708 million. ADA is about $0.179, with a market capitalisation of about $6.58 billion, putting Midnight at about one-ninth of Cardano’s market value.

Hoskinson said even if NIGHT later overtakes ADA, it should not be interpreted as Cardano’s defeat. He said Midnight is showing explosive growth and that demand for privacy and regulatory compliance is supporting that growth even as the broader market struggles. He also said Midnight is nearing the stage where it can be discussed as being in the 3rd to 5th tier among major privacy networks.

He added that whether Midnight’s growth will directly lead to higher demand for ADA remains a separate question that must be verified. Hoskinson said the focus should be on the possibility that Midnight’s growth could lead to greater use of the Cardano platform and broader ecosystem expansion, rather than on a market-capitalisation contest between the two assets.