Midnight Network Wallet: Your Private Cardano Wallet
A Midnight network wallet is the private counterpart to your Cardano wallet. Cardano records every transaction in public. Midnight, the partner chain built for privacy, lets you hold shielded balances and transact without publishing amounts or counterparties, and it pays for that privacy with a resource called DUST rather than a gas fee. GeroWallet puts both chains in one Cardano wallet, on mainnet, since version 2.7. This guide explains what the Midnight side has to do, what is live today, and how to get started.
Updated October 2026 for GeroWallet 2.7.1. Midnight is an integrated partner chain, not a Gero product.
Why a private chain needs its own wallet
On Cardano, your wallet address, balance and history are public by design. That transparency is useful for auditing and painful for privacy. Anyone who learns one address can watch everything that touches it.
Midnight takes the opposite approach for the data that should stay private. A transaction can be proven valid with a zero-knowledge proof while the amounts and parties stay hidden. That changes what a wallet has to do:
- It has to hold a public balance and a shielded balance and keep both current.
- It has to build zero-knowledge proofs, which is real compute that has to run somewhere.
- It has to manage DUST, the capacity that pays for activity, which accrues from NIGHT you hold rather than being bought.
A wallet that only speaks Cardano cannot do any of that. A Midnight network wallet can, and the useful version sits next to your ADA so you are not running two apps.
The three assets, and which one is which
Confusion between the names is the most common support question, so here it is in one place. The detailed explainer is our guide to NIGHT, cNIGHT and DUST.
| Name | Where it lives | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| NIGHT | Midnight | The network's native token. Public, not shielded. |
| cNIGHT | Cardano | NIGHT represented on Cardano. Glacier Drop claims arrive as cNIGHT. |
| DUST | Midnight | Capacity to transact. Accrues from registered NIGHT or cNIGHT. Cannot be bought. |
In GeroWallet, native NIGHT on Midnight and cNIGHT held on your Cardano wallets charge the same DUST battery. You register cNIGHT from the Cardano side, so there is no bridge step before you can generate.
What is live on mainnet today
Inside GeroWallet 2.7.1, as of October 2026:
Midnight mainnet wallets created from the onboarding card, derived from your existing seed.
NIGHT and public token transfers. Send and receive NIGHT and other public Midnight tokens.
DUST generation from native NIGHT and from cNIGHT on Cardano. Registration needs a small ADA collateral. If your wallet has no pure-ADA UTxO, Gero sponsors it. Duplicate registrations are detected and consolidated. The walkthrough is in how to generate DUST the easiest way.
Shielded balances on mainnet, with background note scanning so the private balance stays current.
A choice of where proofs run. Gero Cloud, a local proof server on your own machine, or Arkhia zkPaaS with your own key, each behind an explicit consent screen and switchable from the dashboard or side panel.
A midnight-js dApp connector, so Midnight dApps can connect and delegate proof generation to the wallet.
Stagenet replaces the retired Preview test network. Preview wallets migrate automatically.
Two honest limits. Private transfers of custom Midnight tokens are live on Stagenet and not yet on mainnet; that timing belongs to Midnight, not Gero. And several 2.7 features reach accounts in staged waves behind remote flags, so a control described here may be rolling out rather than missing.
Where your proofs run, and why it matters
A shielded transaction is only private if the proof that makes it valid is generated somewhere you trust. This is the real differentiator between Midnight wallets.
- Gero Cloud. No setup. Proving runs on Gero's infrastructure, and the consent screen says exactly what is sent.
- Local proof server. A Docker container on your own machine. Nothing leaves your device. The privacy-maximal choice.
- Arkhia zkPaaS. An independent proving service connected with your own key, for people who want neither Gero nor their own hardware in the loop.
Where enabled, Cross-Device Proving extends this: your desktop can generate proofs for your phone over an end-to-end-encrypted channel, and Gero's infrastructure only ever handles ciphertext.
The wallet's broader security posture, including two external audits and the move to Argon2id key derivation, is covered in how GeroWallet is hardened. The full source is public under Apache 2.0 at github.com/Gero-Labs/gerowallet.
Who a Midnight network wallet is for
Cardano holders who claimed NIGHT. Your cNIGHT already sits in a Cardano wallet. Registering it for DUST from the same wallet is the shortest path to using Midnight at all.
People who want their history off the public record. Shielded balances mean a known address no longer reveals what you hold.
Developers building on Midnight. The dApp connector and the choice of proof server make the wallet a test target without extra infrastructure.
Stakers who want one dashboard. Your ADA keeps earning through Cardano staking while the Midnight wallet sits beside it. Nothing about adding Midnight touches your delegation.
Set up a Midnight network wallet in GeroWallet
Install the extension. Chrome, Brave or Edge, from the download page. The iPhone app is in TestFlight, so join the beta if you want mobile.
Create or restore. New users write down a seed phrase and store it offline. Existing users skip this. The Midnight wallet derives from the seed you already have.
Add Midnight. Open the onboarding card, pick Midnight, then mainnet. It appears alongside your Cardano wallets.
Claim NIGHT if you have not. The Glacier Drop claim lives on the Midnight Foundation's official portal. Claimed tokens land in your Cardano wallet as cNIGHT.
Register for DUST. Open the DUST tab and register your cNIGHT or native NIGHT. Accept the sponsored collateral if the wallet offers it.
Pick a proof server. Read the consent screen for the option you choose. You can change it later.
Transact privately. When the battery has charge, use DUST to pay for shielded transactions.
Three habits that help: keep a small amount of ADA in the wallet so registration and fees never stall, check the DUST tab once for duplicate registrations after you set up, and if you run a local proof server, confirm it is reachable before you start a shielded send.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a Midnight network wallet different from a Cardano wallet?
It manages shielded balances, generates zero-knowledge proofs, and tracks DUST. A Cardano wallet does none of those. In GeroWallet the two share one seed and one dashboard.
Is NIGHT private?
No. NIGHT is a public token. Privacy on Midnight comes from shielded balances and shielded transactions, which DUST pays for.
Can I use my cNIGHT without bridging it to Midnight?
Yes. GeroWallet registers cNIGHT for DUST from the Cardano side. It charges the same battery as native NIGHT.
Do I need a separate seed phrase for Midnight?
No. The Midnight wallet derives from your existing GeroWallet seed. One backup covers both chains.
Does GeroWallet own or run Midnight?
No. Midnight is an independent network. GeroWallet is an official Midnight Network partner and provides the non-custodial wallet you use on it.
Start on the private side of Cardano
Your Cardano wallet already holds the cNIGHT. The private side is one onboarding card away. Download GeroWallet, add a Midnight mainnet wallet, and register in the DUST tab. For the illustrated five-step version, see the Midnight wallet page, and if you are choosing a Cardano wallet from scratch, start with our guide to the best ADA wallets.