Hoskinson Meets Ripple CTO: Secret NIGHT Collaboration Exposed

Charles Hoskin corroborates firsthand interaction with Ripple CTO David Schwartz when developing NIGHT tokens of Midnight. Cooperation across the chains.

Cardano creator Charles Hoskinson disclosed that they had a deep partnership with the Ripple leadership during the development of Midnight. Hoskinson, according to The Crypto Basic on X, affirmed direct contact with Ripple CTO, David Schwartz.

NIGHT token went live in December. The native token of the privacy sidechain in Cardano was valued at a valuation of 1.59 billion, with every token priced at approximately 0.096.

Cross-Chain Coordination Breaks New Ground

The Glacier Drop was released in August 2025. It covered eight ecosystems in seven blockchains, such as XRP Ledger, Cardano, Solana, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.

Approximately 33 million users were eligible to receive the airdrop. A total of 1.5 million participants asserted their NIGHT allocation. The allocation did not include insider distributions and first coin offerings.

The Midnight Foundation had spent 18 months designing Glacier Drop. The schedule was indicative of technical complexity through several blockchain architectures. Both chains had different rules, tooling, and limitations.

XRP Ledger Posed Unprecedented Challenges

The XRP Ledger became the most demanding ecosystem. XRPL had never sanctioned the distribution of this size, as reported on X by The Crypto Basic. The development team needed direct technical advice.

Hoskinson met with David Schwartz face-to-face. The XRP Ledger was originally designed by Schwartz. The teams talked about the operation of XRPL and the method of airdrop implementation.

The two teams brainstormed on the practical solutions. These consultations allowed the NIGHT airdrop onto XRPL. The partnership provided technical innovation.

Maximalism Falls Away Through Development

The partnership changed the way of thinking in the Cardano team. Hoskinson observed that there are numerous crypto developers who become maximalists, paying attention only to their networks.

The construction of the Midnight demanded that Cardano engineers operate nodes on various ecosystems. They were built on Ethereum, Solana, and XRPL at the same time. The experience of working with various blockchains showed the peculiarity of the strengths of each network.

Hoskinson noted that it becomes hard to be a maximalist. Every blockchain has its own benefits. The interchain experience opened up horizons.

The Glacier Drop model goes further past Midnight. It can be used as a prototype in the execution of subsequent projects, and as the project goes on, further refinement can be done in the next six months.