Midnight Ledger v9 upgrade mainnet release

Midnight's Ledger v9 upgrade is planned to reach mainnet in the fourth quarter of 2026, with no exact date announced. The release involves the NIGHT and SOL coins and is designed to bring private DeFi to Solana wallets. The timing is tentative and not confirmed.

What is happening

Midnight Foundation CTO Sebastien Guillemot announced that the v9 ledger upgrade will bring on-chain privacy to Solana. According to the announcement, the mainnet release is planned with the Midnight Ledger v9 upgrade "later this year." The upgrade is currently live on testnet, and no precise mainnet date has been given.

The integration is expected to bring private swaps and shielded tokens, as well as direct interaction with private DeFi. It also covers sponsored dApp fees for SOL users, powered by NIGHT's dual-token model. Solana users are expected to be able to use these features straight from their Solana wallets, without a separate install.

The announcement follows a recent milestone on the network. Permissionless smart contracts went live on the Midnight mainnet on September 28, allowing developers to deploy contracts without a required security review on Preprod. Midnight Explorer reported that daily transactions rose from 284 on October 1 to 26,178 on October 8, an increase of about 9,117%.

Why it matters

For the Midnight project, the upgrade extends its privacy tooling beyond its own ecosystem to Solana users. Because no separate install is required, the barrier to trying private DeFi could be lower than with standalone privacy applications. Sponsored fees paid through NIGHT's dual-token model also link the Solana integration to the NIGHT token.

For holders and traders of NIGHT and SOL, the main things to follow are whether the mainnet date is confirmed, how the testnet phase progresses, and whether network activity seen after the smart contract launch continues. Since the timing is tentative, the schedule could change, and an official announcement from the Midnight Foundation would be the point at which a firm date becomes known.

Key details

• Date: Q4 2026 (tentative; exact date not announced)
• Project: Midnight
• Coins: NIGHT, SOL
• Category: Mainnet Launch
• Status: Tentative
• Source: TradingView / U.Today, "Cardano-linked Midnight posts 9,100% transaction surge after smart contract deployment" (https://www.tradingview.com/news/u_today:5e005b616094b:0-cardano-midnight-posts-9-100-transaction-surge-after-smart-contract-deployment/)