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Midnight Airdrop: NIGHT Stages, Thawing Dates and Claim Deadlines

Redacción CardumenRedacción CardumenMidnight

Glass hourglass on a black background: a stream of white tokens falls from above onto the accumulated sand, and on the left the Midnight logo reads.

The Midnight airdrop is not over yet. The NIGHT token is distributed in stages, and two dates bracket it: the end of the thawing —the gradual release of the tokens— on December 4, 2026, and the close of the redemption portal on March 4, 2027.

If you entered the portal and saw “0 NIGHT” where you expected your tokens, they were not stolen from you: most likely your tranche has not been released yet, or you did not claim it. It is the misunderstanding that comes up most often.

Midnight is the privacy blockchain built as a partner chain of Cardano, and NIGHT is its governance token. All of this information exists and is public, but it is scattered across a long FAQ: this is the short version, with the schedule and the dates.

How much time is left: end of thawing and portal close

NIGHT’s distribution was not a one-off payment. According to the official guide, it happens over a 360-day thawing period: the tokens unlock gradually on a fixed schedule, hence the name Glacier Drop.

It started on December 10, 2025 and ends on December 4, 2026. After that comes a final 90-day window (Grace Period) before the portal closes, on March 4, 2027.

As of September 17, 2026, 78 days were left until the end of thawing and 168 until the portal closes. One key detail: the countdown on the official redemption portal is global, not personal —the same for everyone, visible without connecting any wallet—. What is personal is each address’s release schedule.

The stages of the Midnight airdrop

The airdrop was split into three phases: two have already happened and the third has not opened yet. In total, the community has already claimed more than 4.5 billion tokens.

Phase What it was Status
1. Glacier Drop The big phase: it distributed based on an earlier snapshot of non-custodial wallets. October 20, 2025
2. Scavenger Mine Proof-of-work on your computer: you solved challenges and that generated an allocation. November 19, 2025
3. Lost-and-Found The final phase: it will give another chance to eligible users who did not claim. Not open yet

Phase 1 — Glacier Drop

It was the big phase. It opened on August 5, 2025 with a planned 60-day window that the official FAQ set until October 4, 2025; it was extended, and the effective close was October 20, 2025.

Eligibility came from a snapshot taken at midnight on June 11, 2025, chosen at random before the whitepaper was published. The requirement: at least 100 dollars in ADA, BTC, ETH, AVAX, BAT, BNB, SOL or XRP in a non-custodial wallet.

Phase 2 — Scavenger Mine

It arrived around August 2025: CPU-optimized proof-of-work, where your computer solved challenges and that generated an allocation. It lasted 21 days and closed on November 19, 2025. The pool was raised from 626 million to 1 billion NIGHT; that is why the third phase ended up smaller.

Phase 3 — Lost-and-Found

Not open yet. The official FAQ describes it, but publishes no date or window. What is known is the size: about 252 million NIGHT, after the Scavenger Mine rebalancing.

Redemption: how the tokens are released and claimed

Claims are processed with Hydra, Cardano’s L2 that Midnight uses to handle that volume without congesting the network. The official process has five steps: connect the destination address in the portal, check whether your allocation has been released, redeem what has been released, pay the network fee —you need a Cardano wallet with ADA— and confirm.

The third step is the one most often overlooked: every tranche has to be claimed by hand; the tokens do not arrive in your wallet on their own. And the fifth has its own trap: the wallet interface can take a while to reflect the balance. If the portal says “Confirmed”, the tokens are there.

The four 25% tranches and the random date

Each allocation is released in four equal 25% tranches. The first unlock falls on a random date between day 1 and day 90; the next three, every 90 days. That is why an address can take between 270 and 360 days to be fully released.

That schedule is calculated per address and cannot be changed. You can redeem each 25% as it is released, or wait and redeem everything at once: waiting “reduces the number of transactions required”, that is, fewer fees.

Why the portal shows you 0 NIGHT

This is the central point. Many people open the portal, see “0 NIGHT” and conclude that their tokens were stolen. What is most likely is the opposite: either their tranche has not been released yet, or they did not claim it.

A YouTube channel that covers the redemption, in its video “Midnight Redeem Opens! Thaw Process Explained & FAQs”, put it plainly (our translation): “when people come in here, the first thing they see is zero NIGHT tokens, they get scared and think I stole them”. Its explanation points to the same place: “most people did not read the interface properly and thought they had lost all their tokens”.

And the process, when done properly, works. Another user told it end to end: “I did a redemption in the third thaw and the NIGHT arrived in a NuFi wallet, and then I moved it to a Ledger. I received it, no doubt” (our translation). Portal, wallet, hardware wallet: that is the path.

The same portal hosts two allocation routes side by side, Glacier Drop and Scavenger Mine, and that confuses people too: a r/Midnight user said (our translation) that when checking the thaw he only saw the NIGHT he had mined, not the original claim.

The ADA fee: what claiming costs

Redeeming NIGHT requires a transaction on Cardano, and every transaction on Cardano pays a fee. That fee is nominal and in ADA, and it goes to Cardano’s validators: according to the official FAQ, “it is neither received by nor affiliated with Midnight”.

Two clarifications: you do not need to have ADA in the destination address, but you do need ADA somewhere to execute the transaction, or someone to sponsor it from another wallet. If you are sorting out your ADA, the Cardano wallet guide and the one on how to delegate your ADA cover the basics.

The redemption portal pause: June and July 2026

During 2026 the portal was unavailable for a while. Redemptions were suspended on June 28, 2026 and resumed on July 9, 2026 at 17:00 UTC.

The official announcement was explicit: “this pause did not affect the original redemption schedule; all the NIGHT that was released during the suspension period is now redeemable”. If a tranche was due in that stretch, you did not lose it.

If your tokens ended up in a locked wallet

There is an overlap between this airdrop and a story we have already covered on the site. A r/Midnight user put it in the first person (our translation): “I claimed my Glacier tokens using the Yoroi extension. I was waiting for the last thaw period and was not aware of the hack. Now Yoroi is SecondFi and everything is locked”. Another: “I moved my assets to my hardware wallet (Ledger). My ADA showed up, but my NIGHT did not”.

That overlap has its own follow-ups in how to recover funds from Yoroi/SecondFi and in the SecondFi hack investigation. And one question remains open: SecondFi covered the migration fees, but it has not announced the same for NIGHT redemption.

How to avoid a scam when claiming NIGHT

The most useful rule: the official channels are few and they are listed in the FAQ itself.

These are the official channels. Any other account, site or message that presents itself as Midnight support is not. And the usual reminder: no legitimate redemption process will ask you for your seed phrase. Not a support agent, not a form, not an “agent” who messages you privately.

Frequently asked questions about the Midnight airdrop

Why does the portal show me 0 NIGHT? Because it shows what is available to claim at that moment, not your total allocation: if the tranche has not been released or you have not claimed it, the figure is zero.

When are my tokens released? The schedule is per address —the first 25% tranche between day 1 and day 90, the following ones every 90 days— and it cannot be changed: it can take between 270 and 360 days.

Do I have to claim every tranche by hand? Yes. You can do it at each 25% or wait and claim everything at once: fewer transactions, fewer fees.

Do I need ADA in the destination address? No. You do need ADA somewhere to pay the fee.

I tried to claim the last tranche and the portal gave me an error. Did I lose that tranche? No. As long as the portal is open, you can try again; the July announcement was explicit that the pause did not affect the schedule and that everything released during the suspension remained redeemable.

I claimed with a wallet and it says I have nothing allocated. What should I do? Check that you are connecting the same address from the snapshot and check whether your tranche has been released: the portal shows what is claimable now, not your total.

What if I do not manage to claim before the close? The official FAQ says that NIGHT “will always be yours and always redeemable”, but it does not detail the process after the March 4, 2027 close.

What the FAQ does not answer: who covers the redemption fee for the wallets compromised by the SecondFi hack, how claims made by exchanges on behalf of users are credited, and whether the portal has a public API for batch redemptions.

Sources

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