Midnight prepares open smart contract deployment on mainnet: Details 

Midnight seems ready to activate the much-awaited smart-contract support for the privacy-focused blockchain. 

In an X post on Saturday, Sebastien Guillemo, the CTO of Midnight Foundation, said that the upgrade will soon be rolled out on the mainnet and will include private smart contracts. 

Initially, only a few decentralized applications on Midnight such as AscendPerps were whitelisted, allowing them to run in a gated garden. However, the latest update means that smart contract support will be available for anyone to experiment with and deploy. 

The blockchain runs as a sidechain to Cardano, but leverages zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs for its underlying privacy architecture. In fact, the blockchain has been billed as a solution for institutional players seeking on-chain. 

That’s exactly why the private smart contracts feature and the ability to mint private tokens (think of a Zcash-like token) have attracted growing interest in the network. 

Additionally, Guillemot noted that the next version of smart contracts will come with extra features, including events and composability. 

In other words, it will allow the development of DeFi apps that can communicate with each other, ideally allowing complex apps such as the Aave lending protocol. 

Will privacy narrative fuel Midnight’s adoption?

Midnight went live in Q1 2026, and the latest announcement is part of its transition into open deployment and decentralization. 

Commenting on the same, Dave, a Cardano DRep (delegated representative), said, 

Good progress from the Midnight team. The privacy stack is starting to move from architecture into usable infrastructure, and that is where things get interesting, a huge milestone for Midnight.

That said, the privacy narrative has been one of the strongest metas, alongside perps, prediction markets, and stablecoins. 

In fact, according to trader Bob Loukas, the privacy coins segment didn’t even “experience a crypto bear market” given their strong performance as other tokens dumped hard.  

Privacy coins didn’t experience a bear market this cycle. Not sure we can say that about any token over the prior cycles. That’s telling, and it’s more than just a narrative imo.

It’s now a question of whether the strong traction of the privacy segment will spill over to NIGHT, Midnight’s native token. 

The token has pumped by 30% this week, but it hit the upper range of its ascending channel. If the pattern persists, the channel’s range lows and highs could offer trading opportunities like it did over the past few days. 

Final Summary

• Midnight has announced plans for smart contract support on the mainnet. 
• NIGHT jumped by 30% this week, but whether it will ride the privacy coins narrative is unclear.