Cardano Founder Confirms Direct Work With Ripple CTO During Midnight Development

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has shed new light on the extensive cross-chain collaboration behind Midnight’s Glacier Drop, highlighting his direct engagement with Ripple’s CTO.

NIGHT, the native token of Cardano’s privacy sidechain Midnight, has emerged as one of the most talked-about tokens this month. Since it began trading on December 9, it has reached a valuation of about $1.59 billion, with each token priced around $0.096

Cross-Collaboration Made Glacier Drop a Success

Following its launch, Hoskinson has continued to discuss the project publicly. In a recent commentary, he detailed the broad cross-chain coordination that made the Glacier Drop, the first phase of NIGHT’s airdrop, possible

He emphasized that the distribution deliberately avoided standard crypto launch mechanisms such as insider allocations or initial coin offerings (ICOs). Instead, every eligible participant had an equal right of refusal, reinforcing the goal of fairness and decentralization

According to him, the Midnight Foundation took roughly 18 months to design the Glacier Drop. The extended timeline stemmed from the technical complexity of working across multiple blockchain architectures, each with its own rules, tooling, and limitations.

To execute the airdrop correctly, Hoskinson said he and his team had to understand how each supporting chain functioned. In some cases, this meant tackling challenges that had never been addressed before

Working Directly with Ripple CTO

Notably, Hoskinson cited the XRP Ledger (XRPL) as one of the most challenging ecosystems his team had to study for the Glacier Drop. He explained that XRPL had never supported a distribution of this scale, which forced the development team to seek direct technical guidance.

As a result, they reached out to Ripple CTO David Schwartz, the original architect of the XRP Ledger. Hoskinson recounted sitting down with Schwartz to gain a deeper understanding of how XRPL functions and how to implement an airdrop of that magnitude

During these discussions, both teams brainstormed practical solutions that ultimately made the NIGHT airdrop possible on the XRP Ledger

A Shift in Mindset

Beyond the technical breakthrough, Hoskinson said the collaboration reshaped his team’s mindset. He noted that many crypto developers fall into maximalism, focusing exclusively on their own networks while dismissing others.

However, building Midnight required Cardano engineers to run nodes and develop across multiple ecosystems, including XRPL, Solana, and Ethereum. By working with different blockchains, Hoskinson emphasized that it becomes difficult to remain a maximalist, as each network reveals unique strengths

As reported earlier, Hoskinson reaffirmed that the Glacier Drop framework extends beyond Midnight and serves as a model for launching future projects. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that further refinement is needed, adding that the team expects to fine-tune the protocol over the next six months