Cardano Founder Reveals Monumental Midnight Deal Poised to Inject Billions in TVL

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has announced a landmark partnership between the privacy-focused Midnight network and UK's Monument Bank, declaring it potentially "one of the largest deals we've ever done." The agreement, which could funnel "hundreds of millions to billions" in Total Value Locked (TVL) into the Midnight ecosystem, centers on the bank's plan to place retail customer deposits on a public blockchain. Hoskinson praised the Midnight Foundation team for securing the commercial win, positioning Midnight as the definitive home for 'Web 2.5 ventures.'

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Monument, a UK digital bank serving the mass-affluent segment, said it plans to become the first UK bank to tokenize retail customer deposits on a public blockchain, with Midnight providing the underlying network and privacy-preserving architecture.

The first phase is concrete. Monument said it is targeting up to £250 million in tokenized deposits, with each token representing a one-to-one claim on funds held at the bank. Those deposits are intended to remain interest-bearing, redeemable in pounds sterling and protected within the existing regulatory framework, including the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Monument says it currently serves more than 100,000 clients and has over £7 billion in savings deposits, giving the project a real balance-sheet base rather than a purely experimental starting point.

That setup is central to Midnight’s pitch. The tokenized deposits are not being framed as a new synthetic asset or an offshore wrapper, but as a blockchain mirror of traditional bank deposits. According to the release, transaction data on Midnight will be shielded and visible only to Monument and its customers, an architecture aimed at preserving the confidentiality banks need while still using public-chain rails.

Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Syed used the deal to make a broader point about institutional blockchain adoption. Financial firms, he said, have struggled with the tension between openness and banking-grade confidentiality. Midnight, in his words, is designed to “represent assets on public networks” while protecting “sensitive financial information,” and Monument’s rollout is meant to show that regulated products can move on-chain without stepping outside existing compliance and consumer-protection frameworks.

The longer-term roadmap explains why Hoskinson is talking in terms of billions rather than the initial £250 million. Phase two would expand beyond tokenized deposits into tokenized investment products delivered through the Monument app, including access to private equity, commodity funds and structured products. Phase three would introduce Lombard-style lending, allowing clients to borrow against investments without selling them. Monument also said its technology affiliate aims to extend tokenized-deposit functionality to other institutions through its Banking-as-a-Service platform.

In that sense, Hoskinson’s TVL projection reads less like a claim about day-one inflows and more like a statement about the size of the pipeline if the rollout expands as planned. The hard figure disclosed so far is £250 million in the first phase. But if Monument can move from deposit tokenization into investment products, lending and third-party enablement, Midnight would be competing for balance-sheet-linked activity that is structurally different from mercenary DeFi liquidity.

For Midnight, the partnership is also a live test of its core thesis: that privacy-enhancing infrastructure can make public blockchains usable for regulated finance. If Monument executes beyond the pilot, the deal would give the Cardano-linked network something many crypto projects still lack, a banking use case tied to real deposits, real customers and a product roadmap built to stay inside the guardrails of traditional finance.

At press time, Cardano traded at $0.26.