The crypto world is buzzing over the launch of the NIGHT token airdrop for Cardano’s Midnight Network. The “Glacier Drop” distribution, which kicked off on August 5th, saw incredible demand, with over 11,000 digital wallets across eight prominent blockchain networks snapping up more than 250 million NIGHT tokens in just a few hours.
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The live Midnight claim portal facilitates claims from wallets on Cardano, Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Binance’s BNB Chain, Avalanche, and Brave’s Basic Attention Token (BAT) networks. A massive 33.6 million wallets are eligible to participate in this multi-stage airdrop initiative.
ADA's price trends sideways on the daily chart, despite the launch of the highly anticipated Cardano NIGHT airdrop. Source: ADAUSD on Tradingview
Airdrop Distribution: A Multi-Chain Approach
While Cardano users are slated to receive the lion’s share of the total 24 billion NIGHT tokens (50%), the distribution includes participants from various other blockchain ecosystems. The claim process is designed to be secure and user-controlled, requiring validation of eligibility and digital signature of a transaction.
This initial “Glacier Drop” phase will remain open for 60 days. Following this, a second phase, dubbed “Scavenger Mine,” will allow users to acquire unclaimed tokens by participating in on-chain computational tasks. A final “Lost-and-Found” stage is planned after the mainnet launch, offering a limited window for late claims of a reduced portion of the original allocation.
Ledger Hardware Wallet Issue Impacts Some ADA Holders
Despite the excitement surrounding the airdrop, some users have encountered challenges. A number of Cardano (ADA) holders who use Ledger hardware wallets have reported issues when attempting to claim their NIGHT tokens.
Cardano’s founder, Charles Hoskinson, explained that the issue stems from limitations within Ledger’s firmware. The current firmware only supports message signing of 31 bytes, which falls short of the 251 bytes required for the “Glacier Drop” process.
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The Cardano development team is actively investigating and implementing a workaround. Hoskinson advised affected users to try again later in the month. As he stated on X (formerly Twitter), “If you are one of the impacted people, then come back towards the end of the month and try again.”
$71 Million Network Upgrade Shows Limited Impact on ADA Price
Interestingly, the airdrop’s strong initial reception coincides with a period where Cardano’s recent $71 million network upgrade has had less impact on the market than anticipated. This upgrade, designed to improve smart contract efficiency and increase network scalability, has had a negligible effect on the price of ADA. ADA currently trades around $0.72, reflecting a decrease of 2.92% over the past 24 hours.
Cover image from ChatGPT, ADAUSD chart from Tradingview