NIGHT sits about 78% below its record high, while ZEC is roughly 51% below its own, so the smaller token has much more ground to recover.
Charles Hoskinson has argued that Cardano’s Midnight network will eventually eclipse Zcash, citing developments including private agents, selective disclosure, and a DeFi kernel designed to work across major chains.
His claim comes as Zcash trades far above its level from a year ago, while Midnight’s NIGHT token remains nearly 78% below its all-time high.
Midnight’s Privacy and DeFi Design
In a September 28 post on X, Hoskinson quoted ratings provider Weiss Crypto, which had earlier suggested that NIGHT has a good chance of becoming “one of the best plays of the next 24 months.” He contended that Midnight will be “bigger than Zcash,” then laid out what the privacy-focused blockchain developed by Input Output, the same team behind Cardano, has got going for it.
“Selective disclosure, Private Agents, abstraction with a DeFi Kernel for all major chains,” wrote the developer.
He also mentioned three privacy techniques the network was working on, including zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments, and multi-party computations, and linked Midnight’s planned architecture to Cardano’s 24/7 network uptime and the Leios upgrade.
The market data currently shows a wide gap between the two assets. NIGHT was trading near $0.027 at the time of writing, up over 2% in the last 24 hours and more than 9% in the past week. It also gained close to 30% across a fortnight and well over 36% in 30 days.
Zcash, meanwhile, was trading at around $1,600, an almost 7% dip in 24 hours, although it was up over 2% across seven days and nearly 36% over two weeks. The privacy coin’s one-month run was also better than NIGHT’s, after it gained 93% in that period, while remaining 2,660% higher than where it was a year ago.
Midnight is sitting about 77.5% below its record of close to $0.12 from December 9, 2025, while ZEC is about 51% under its own ATH of $3,191.
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Looking at trading volume, it is about $14 million for NIGHT, an increase of 43% from one day ago, against roughly $1 billion for ZEC, which represents a 24% drop from what changed hands yesterday.
Mixed Fortunes for NIGHT and ZEC
NIGHT fell more than 43% on July 21 to record a low near $0.016 after 290 million tokens were dumped in the market following a withdrawal from a Wanchain bridge contract, with the Midnight Foundation stating that the network was not hacked.
On its part, Zcash topped $1,600 last week for the first time since 2016, then slid as the wider market fell, with analyst Crypto Patel arguing that a cup-and-handle pattern suggests the $1,600 to $2,000 range could be a local top, with a drop below $500 possible within one to three years.
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