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Over the last few years, Cardano has fallen into the background when it comes to decentralized finance (DeFi) participation as the likes of Solana and XRP ramped up. Solana triggered the meme coin wave that swept the market for two years, and XRP continued to push into institutional adoption with deals and partnerships, as well as regulatory compliance, while Cardano lagged behind. That is, until recently, that an anticipated launch changed the tide in favor of Cardano.
Earlier this month, a new token rocked the crypto sphere as the Midnight (NIGHT) went live with its airdrop. At first, the token looked to be off to a slow start, crashing by over 90% from its launch $1.81 all-time high to reach below $0.025. This had made widespread news as airdrop claimers rushed to dump their tokens.
However, what seemed like a dead drop has begun to change, with the Midnight (NIGHT) token moving fast and taking the Cardano network along for the ride. As Bitcoinist reported, the token launch had essentially reignited interest in the Cardano blockchain, leading to over 122,000 transactions containing NIGHT tokens.
Midnight, which is a side chain of the Cardano network, focuses on investor privacy, leveraging the recent privacy narrative that has taken hold in the crypto market. With a large number of airdrop claimers having collected their tokens, and presumably sold, the token has begun to recover.
On Sunday, market reports showed that Midnight (NIGHT) was one of the best-performing altcoins in the market, rising over 30% in a 24-hour period. On the weekly chart, it showed a 44% increase, as its market cap rose above $1.5 billion again. However, that is not the thing that caught the Cardano founder’s eye.
With the Midnight (NIGHT) token price soaring, there was a major spike in its trading volume, enough to catch the attention of Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. Stakepool had taken to X (formerly Twitter) to share with the community that the Midnight (NIGHT) token had secured more trading volume than Solana and XRP combined.
Responding to this post, the Cardano founder pointed out that Midnight (NIGHT) was a native token of the blockchain and has managed more trading volume than both XRP and Solana combined. This is backed by data from CoinMarketCap, which shows Midnight (NIGHT) with a daily trading volume of over $6 billion, compared to $2.4 billion for XRP and $2.078 billion for Solana in the same time period.
However, Cardan itself continues to struggle, with $405 million in daily trading volume for the same time period. XRP and Solana are the 5th and 7th-largest cryptocurrencies in the market, with Cardano at 10th place, and Midnight (NIGHT) at 46th position.
