While the entire crypto market is watching the speed race of a leading chain and Ethereum's ecosystem prosperity, Cardano, labeled as a "scholarly" public chain, has long faded from the spotlight. As the once-promising "Blockchain 3.0" banner begins to fade, the development team has finally pulled out their trump card—the Midnight privacy sidechain, claiming it is a "game-changer." The question is: can this truly save the ecosystem, or is it just another pie in the sky for investors?

First, let's clarify what Midnight actually is. It is not an independent new chain but a privacy extension solution built on Cardano. Its core technology is zero-knowledge proofs, with a straightforward goal: to allow transaction parties to hide sensitive information while maintaining verifiability of on-chain data. In theory, this is attractive for scenarios requiring privacy protection, such as financial institutions and identity verification services. The developers have also partnered deeply with a top-tier payment project’s technical lead and launched a NIGHT token airdrop plan covering multiple ecosystems. It sounds quite promising.

But data speaks for itself. One week after launch, NIGHT has added about 3,000 new wallets, with over 20,000 holders. This achievement looks decent, but when compared to Ethereum’s daily data traffic, the gap becomes obvious. How long can the hype last? Will real applications follow? What about the community’s long-term engagement? These are the key indicators that determine the project's survival. Relying solely on technical stories and ecosystem cooperation hype, without genuine demand-driven use cases, will likely lead to the old script of "advanced technology but difficult to implement in practice."