Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, says a new deal between privacy-focused blockchain Midnight and UK digital bank Monument could become one of the largest commercial wins yet for the network — potentially bringing “hundreds of millions to billions” in TVL if the partnership scales as planned.
In a post on X, Hoskinson praised the Midnight Foundation team, writing: “This is one of the largest deals we’ve ever done and could bring hundreds of millions to billions of TVL to the Midnight ecosystem. I’m extremely proud of Fahmi Syed and his team at the Midnight Foundation for the hard work they put into the negotiations with Monument. Midnight is the home of Web 2.5 ventures.”
What Monument is doing
- Monument is a UK digital bank focused on mass‑affluent customers. It says it serves more than 100,000 clients and holds over £7 billion in savings deposits — giving the project a substantive balance-sheet starting point rather than a purely experimental pilot.
- The bank plans to tokenize retail customer deposits on a public blockchain, with Midnight supplying the network and privacy-preserving architecture. Monument says this would make it the first UK bank to put retail deposits on a public chain.
- Phase one targets up to £250 million in tokenized deposits. Each token represents a 1:1 claim on funds held at Monument, remains interest-bearing, is redeemable in sterling, and stays protected under existing regulation — including the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS).
Privacy + compliance design
Midnight frames the tokenized deposits not as a synthetic asset or offshore wrapper but as a blockchain mirror of traditional bank deposits. According to the announcement, transaction data on Midnight will be shielded and visible only to Monument and its customers — an architecture designed to preserve the confidentiality banks require while still using public-chain rails.
Fahmi Syed, President of the Midnight Foundation, used the deal to highlight a central institutional barrier to blockchain adoption: the tension between public transparency and banking-grade confidentiality. “Midnight is designed to represent assets on public networks while protecting sensitive financial information,” he said, arguing Monument’s rollout demonstrates regulated products can move on-chain without abandoning compliance and consumer protection.
Why Hoskinson is eyeing “billions”
The disclosed hard figure so far is the £250 million target for phase one. But Monument’s longer roadmap explains Hoskinson’s larger TVL projection:
- Phase two would expand tokenization to investment products within the Monument app — private equity, commodity funds, and structured products.
- Phase three would introduce Lombard-style lending, letting clients borrow against tokenized investments.
- Monument’s technology arm also plans to offer the tokenized-deposit capability to other institutions via a Banking-as-a-Service model.
If Monument moves beyond deposit tokenization into investment products, lending and third-party enablement, the on-chain activity would be tied to real deposits and balance-sheet activity — a different class of capital than transient DeFi liquidity.
Why the deal matters
For Midnight (and the Cardano ecosystem by association), this is a live test of a core thesis: privacy-enhancing infrastructure can make public blockchains suitable for regulated finance. If Monument executes beyond a pilot, the partnership would deliver a banking use case with real customers, real deposits and a product roadmap designed to stay within traditional financial guardrails — something many crypto projects still lack.
Market note
At the time of reporting, Cardano (ADA) traded around $0.26.
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