Midnight: transactions increased by 9,117% after the launch of smart contracts

The privacy-focused blockchain Midnight, associated with Cardano, recorded a 9,117% increase in transactions just days after deploying smart contracts on the mainnet. Permissionless smart contracts became available on the Midnight mainnet on September 28, allowing developers to write and deploy contracts without the need for security checks on Preprod. This marked a significant milestone for the network.

The launch of smart contracts also enabled applications to deploy contracts on behalf of end users, simplifying the user registration process. The enhanced operational capability opens up new opportunities for decentralized finance tools, gaming applications, and the creation of custom privacy products. According to data from the Midnight Explorer platform, the number of transactions increased from 284 to 26,178 in the week from October 1 to 8. This represents a more than 91-fold increase. Midnight Explorer noted that network activity not only increased but surged significantly.

This week, Midnight Foundation CTO Sebastian Guillemot announced that the project is transitioning to Solana. The Midnight v9 ledger update will provide integration of private decentralized finance directly into Solana wallets, without the need to install additional applications. According to Guillemot, Solana users will be able to conduct private swaps and interact with private DeFi directly from their Solana wallets without additional installations. The feature is currently on the testnet, with a mainnet launch planned with the Midnight Ledger v9 update later this year. In its weekly report, Cardano network developer Input Output highlighted improvements for the network, including the release of Ouroboros consensus versions 5.0 and 5.1.0.0, as well as an updated version of Plutus 1.71.0.0, which includes the full Plutus V4 script context, and added Plutus Core language version 1.2.0 with cost models for keepPolicies and dropPolicies (CIP-0168).