Charles Hoskinson claims that Cardano's Midnight network will eventually surpass Zcash. He bases his words on developments such as the use of private agents, selective reporting, and a DeFi core designed to operate across all major networks. Hoskinson made this statement in his post on September 28 on X, where he cited an evaluation by Weiss Crypto. He stated that Midnight "will be bigger than Zcash" and outlined the advantages of the privacy-focused blockchain developed by the Input Output team, which worked on Cardano.
He also mentioned three methods of ensuring privacy that the network is working on, including zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments, and multi-party computation. Hoskinson linked the planned architecture of Midnight with the round-the-clock operation of the Cardano network and the Leios upgrade. Currently, market data shows a significant discrepancy between the two assets. The NIGHT token is trading around $0.027, up 2% over the past 24 hours and more than 9% over the past week. It has also risen nearly 30% over two weeks and more than 36% over the past 30 days.
Zcash, in turn, is trading around $1,600, representing nearly a 7% decrease over 24 hours, although it has risen by more than 2% over the week and nearly 36% over two weeks. Over the past month, Zcash has performed better, increasing by 93%, while remaining 2,660% above its year-ago levels. The Midnight cryptocurrency is approximately 77.5% below its record high of $0.12 set on December 9, 2025, while Zcash is about 51% below its own ATH of $3,191. The trading volume of the NIGHT token is around $14 million, which is 43% more than the previous day, while the volume of ZEC is approximately $1 billion, 24% less than the previous day. NIGHT fell more than 43% on July 21, reaching a low of around $0.016 after 290 million tokens were dumped on the market. Nevertheless, the Midnight Foundation stated that the network was not hacked. Last week, Zcash surpassed the $1,600 mark for the first time since 2016, before falling again amid a broader market decline. Analyst Crypto Patel claims that the "cup and handle" pattern indicates that the range from $1,600 to $2,000 may be a short-term peak, with the possibility of falling below $500 within one to three years.
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