Originally published at https://mrnasdog.com/research/night/inflation

Looking for the buy-or-sell answer? It is on the NIGHT coin page, with demand and price drivers: mrnasdog.com/research/night

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

Midnight (NIGHT) created 0 new coins in the last 90 days and burned 0, yet the number of NIGHT-priced coins that can trade rose by 514.63M, or +3.01% of the 17.12B that can trade on Cardano and BNB Chain together. The cause was a single event: on Jul 20 2026 an outside bridge between Cardano and BNB Chain was drained, and its NIGHT copies on BNB Chain kept trading with almost nothing behind them. For the next 90 days we expect 0.00%, because the Reserve that will one day pay block producers has not started and the total stays at 24B under the plan.

The verdict, in one paragraph

Over the 90 days from Jul 18 to Oct 16 2026, NIGHT supply grew +3.01% on our count, all of it from the bridge hack, while the monitor we check against reads +0.00%. The gap is 3.01 percentage points, large enough that the coin page shows a monitor-gap warning. We walked every source class and kept our number: the monitor’s circulating figure is a fixed sum of NIGHT’s allocation groups, so it cannot see copies of NIGHT living on another chain. Looking forward, the reading is 0.00%. In one line: Midnight is a quiet supply chain with one bridge scar.

Sell pressure: where new NIGHT comes from

Protocol inflation was 0. The Midnight whitepaper says new NIGHT can enter circulation only as block rewards paid from a Reserve of 6.00B NIGHT, and only once block production opens to the public. The Reserve wallet on Cardano has not moved since Mar 13 2026. Midnight’s Oct 14 2026 roadmap lists block production rewards and the plan for paying them on Cardano was only filed as a proposal on Oct 4 2026, with no start date, so the next 90 days also book nothing.

Vesting unlocks added 0. The 4.55B NIGHT won in the Glacier Drop and Scavenger Mine airdrops unlocks in four quarterly steps that started on Dec 10 2025, and the final step ends on Dec 4 2026. About 1.18B NIGHT still waits in the claim contract. Every one of those coins is already counted in the 16.61B circulating, so an unlock moves NIGHT from one holder to another and adds no new supply.

Foundation and unscheduled unlocks added 0. The Midnight Foundation (8.40B) and its subsidiary Midnight TGE (3.66B) could move their coins from Dec 10 2025, and both are counted as circulating, so their transfers stay inside the float. Long-term locks and bankruptcy added 0: no court case, estate or long lock holds NIGHT.

The one live sell row is the bridge hack, at 514.63M NIGHT. On Jul 20 2026, in four transfers over eight minutes, an attacker took 515.2M NIGHT out of the Cardano wallet that backed the bridge and sold them. The 526.5M NIGHT copies that the bridge had issued on BNB Chain were not cancelled; they still trade at the same price as NIGHT, while only 11.8M NIGHT now backs them. That leaves 514.63M more NIGHT-priced coins in the market. It was a one-off event, so the next 90 days carry nothing from it.

Buy pressure: where new NIGHT goes

Every buy row is 0. There is no programmatic buyback: transaction fees on Midnight are paid in DUST, a resource that held NIGHT generates by itself, so no fee money is spent buying NIGHT. There is no fee burn of NIGHT either: all 24B NIGHT were created in one go in November 2025 and not a single coin has been destroyed since; DUST is what gets burned when it pays a fee.

There is no Foundation buying. Midnight TGE says it will hand unused coins back to the Reserve one day, which would take them out of circulation and show up here, but none has gone back yet. There is no new long-term lock: NIGHT staking does not exist yet, and the roadmap aims to open it in early 2027.

Foundation and overhang

Two kinds of NIGHT sit near the market. The first is already counted as circulating: the Foundation’s 8.40B and Midnight TGE’s 3.66B. The wallets that first received those 12.06B now hold about 4.07B; the rest has moved to other wallets, exchanges and partners over the past ten months. Selling from here would not change our supply count, but it is the largest pool of NIGHT any one group controls, and we keep watching it.

The second kind is outside the float and would count as new supply if it moved: the Reserve (6.00B, for future block rewards), the on-chain Treasury (1.20B, locked until on-chain voting exists) and the Lost-and-Found pool (192.6M, for airdrop users who missed their claim). Together they are exactly the 7.39B gap between the 24B total and the 16.61B circulating, and none of the three wallets has moved since Mar 13 2026. If any of these balances falls between our checks, the outflow enters the Foundation and unscheduled unlocks row at the next check.

How NIGHT compares to other privacy chains

Zcash and Monero, the older privacy coins, pay miners new coins every block, so their supply grows every day by design: Zcash on a halving schedule toward a 21M cap, Monero on a small permanent tail emission. NIGHT works the other way round. Its whole 24B supply was created at the start, and new circulating coins will come only from a Reserve that pays block producers a small share of what is left each block, so the flow shrinks over time and the Reserve should last for a very long time.

The bigger difference is who holds the coins. A mined coin starts with almost nothing in team hands. NIGHT started with the Foundation and Midnight TGE holding just over half of all supply, unlocked from the first day, and with another 7.39B parked in protocol wallets. That makes NIGHT’s supply story less about steady printing and more about what a few large wallets decide to do.

Fees are a third split. On most chains users spend the native coin on fees, and some chains burn part of it, which can take supply away. On Midnight users spend DUST, which NIGHT generates, so heavier use does not burn NIGHT. Usage adds demand for holding NIGHT, not a burn.

What to watch in the next 90 days

The start of block production rewards: the Oct 14 2026 roadmap lists them, and once they begin the Reserve starts paying out new NIGHT, which goes straight into the protocol inflation row.

Dec 4 2026, when the last airdrop unlock step ends and the 90-day claim grace period begins; this moves no supply on our count, but more NIGHT becomes free to sell.

Any move by the bridge operator to back its BNB Chain copies again or to buy them in, which would show up as a buy row and undo part of the hack.

The Foundation and Midnight TGE wallets, including any coins handed back to the Reserve, and the opening of the Lost-and-Found claim phase.

Summary

Midnight (NIGHT) printed no new coins and burned none in the last 90 days, but the Jul 20 2026 bridge hack left 514.63M NIGHT copies on BNB Chain with nothing behind them, so the coins that can trade grew +3.01% while the monitor read +0.00%. For the next 90 days we expect 0.00%, since the 6.00B Reserve has not started paying block producers. The key risk is concentration: the Foundation and Midnight TGE received 12.06B NIGHT unlocked, and 7.39B more waits in protocol wallets. The plan caps the total at 24B NIGHT.

MrNasDog Pressure Framework analysis of NIGHT, Metric 1 — Inflation. Data + explanation only. Not financial advice. Checked Oct 16 2026.

Original: https://mrnasdog.com/research/night/inflation · Data + explanation only. Not financial advice.