NIGHT Inflation Analysis · October 2026 · Supply was growing · trend cooling

Midnight (NIGHT) supply grew about +3.10% in the last 90 days, and the next 90 days look flat at 0.00%. The Midnight chain itself added no new NIGHT: block rewards from the 6.00B Reserve are not switched on yet. The whole rise came from one event, the Jul 20 2026 bridge hack, which left 514.6M NIGHT copies on BNB Chain trading with no real NIGHT behind them. Nothing burns or buys back NIGHT, and the plan caps the total at 24B.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Our NIGHT ledger reads +3.10% net supply over the 90 days to Oct 5 2026 (514.63M NIGHT against a circulating base of 16.61B) and 0.00% for the next 90 days. Our inflation monitor reads only +0.03%, a gap of 3.07 percentage points, so the page carries a monitor-gap warning. The monitor is not wrong about the chain: its circulating figure is a fixed sum of NIGHT's allocation groups, so it cannot see copies of NIGHT living on another chain. We keep our number because those copies trade at the same price as NIGHT. In one line: a quiet chain with a one-off hack scar.

Sell pressure: where new NIGHT comes from

Protocol inflation is 0. NIGHT was minted once, all 24B at launch on Cardano, and has never been minted again. New NIGHT can only enter the market as block rewards paid out of the Reserve, a protocol-held pile of 6,000,000,000.87 NIGHT that has not made a single transaction since Mar 13 2026. Midnight still runs on invited (federated) block producers, and those producers earn no NIGHT, so the Reserve stays shut until anyone can produce blocks.

Vesting unlocks book 0, even though coins are unlocking right now. Every Glacier Drop and Scavenger Mine claim thaws in four quarters, and the last quarter opens between Sep 6 and Dec 4 2026. About 1.21B NIGHT still sits in the claim contract. But all 4.55B claimed NIGHT is already inside the circulating count, so a thaw moves coins from one counted place to another and adds nothing new.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks are 0: the Midnight Foundation and its launch company hold free coins that are already counted, and the two locked piles outside the count, the community Treasury and the Lost-and-Found pool, did not move. Long-term locks and bankruptcy are 0: there was no token sale, no investor round and no estate holding NIGHT.

The one non-zero row is the bridge hack, 514.63M NIGHT. On Jul 20 2026 an outside bridge linking Cardano and BNB Chain lost 515.2M NIGHT in four transfers within nine minutes. The bridge had issued 526.5M NIGHT copies on BNB Chain, backed by NIGHT it held on Cardano. After the drain only 11.8M real NIGHT remained as backing, while the copies kept trading at the NIGHT price. The drained coins went to the attacker and onward to the market, and the copies stayed in wallets, so the amount of tradable NIGHT grew by the gap between the two: copies minus backing. It is a one-off event, so it adds nothing to the next 90 days.

Buy pressure: where new NIGHT goes

Every buy row is 0. There is no programmatic buyback: no contract or company buys NIGHT with income. There is no fee burn either, because Midnight fees are paid in DUST, a non-transferable resource that NIGHT holders generate just by holding. DUST decays instead of destroying NIGHT, and the NIGHT token has a burn count of zero since it was created.

No Foundation buying was announced or seen on-chain. One buy-side path exists on paper: the launch company's unused NIGHT is meant to return to the Reserve, which would take it out of circulation, but no date is set and the Reserve has not grown. There is also no new long-term lock, since holding NIGHT is enough to make DUST and no staking lock exists yet.

Foundation and overhang

Midnight's supply sits in six groups. Inside the circulating count: the Midnight Foundationwith 8.40B NIGHT, the launch company (Midnight TGE) with 3.66B, and the 4.55B claimed by the community. The largest single wallet seen holds about 2.48B. These coins are free to move, and any sale stays inside the counted float.

Outside the count, and tracked on-chain every rebuild: the Reserve, 6.00B, for future block rewards; the Treasury, 1.20B, locked until on-chain voting exists; and the Lost-and-Found pool, 192.6M, for people who missed the airdrop, with a four-year claim window once it opens. These three add up exactly to the 7.39B that is not counted as circulating. We also watch the bridge: its remaining 11.8M backing and the 526.5M copies. If any of these balances falls between our checks, the outflow enters the sell side at the next rebuild.

How NIGHT compares to other privacy chains

Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) pay miners in brand-new coins with every block: Zcash on a halving schedule toward a 21M cap, Monero with a small tail emission that never stops. NIGHT works differently. Its whole supply already exists, and future rewards come out of a fixed Reserve rather than fresh minting. Today that Reserve is closed, so NIGHT has less protocol inflation than either privacy coin.

The closest match is Cardano (ADA), which also pays rewards as a share of a shrinking reserve. Midnight copies that idea: each block will release a fixed share of what is left in the Reserve, so rewards shrink every block and the pile lasts a very long time. Fees work differently too: Ethereum burns part of each fee, while Midnight fees are paid in DUST, so neither a burn nor fee buying ever reaches NIGHT.

The real difference is custody. Most of NIGHT's float sits with two Midnight entities and a large free airdrop, not with miners, and the biggest one-quarter supply jump came from a third-party bridge rather than the protocol. For NIGHT, bridge risk and Foundation selling matter more than the emission schedule.

What to watch in the next 90 days

Block rewards switching on. Midnight plans to bring in Cardano stake pool operators as block producers in the Mōhalu phase, set for Q4 2026 with no date. The paper sets the first-year pace at about 3.14% of circulating supply a year, which would be roughly 130M NIGHT per 90 days leaving the Reserve.

Dec 4 2026, the last airdrop thaw. The final quarter of claims finishes unlocking, followed by a 90-day grace period to redeem. It is already in the count, so it does not change our number, but it can bring selling.

Lost-and-Found opening. When this claim phase starts, up to 192.6M NIGHTcan enter circulation over four years, with no thaw on claimed coins.

The bridge. If the copies on BNB Chain are re-backed or bought back, part of the 514.6M comes off the market; another drain would add to it.

Summary

Midnight's NIGHT supply grew about +3.10% over the 90 days to Oct 5 2026, all of it from the Jul 20 2026 bridge hack that left 514.6M NIGHT copies unbacked, and it looks flat at 0.00% for the next 90 days. The protocol itself added nothing: all 24B NIGHT were made at launch, and block rewards from the 6.00B Reserve have not started. The key risks are the day those rewards switch on, Foundation and launch-company selling from 12.06B of free coins, and the bridge. Nothing burns or buys back NIGHT, so supply can only move up toward the planned 24B total.

MrNasdog Pressure Framework analysis of NIGHT, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 5 2026.