Charles Hoskinson Clarifies NIGHT Token Airdrop Issue on Ledger Wallets

Owners of Ledger hardware wallets encountered difficulties during the Glacier Drop airdrop by Midnight Foundation. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, explained that the issue is related to message signature processing.

For those curious about glacier drop support for ada on ledger devices, there is an issue with ledger’s implementation of CIP-8 message signing. It apparently only supports signing messages up to 31 bytes whereas the GD payload is 251 bytes.

This is a cardano specific issue…

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) August 5, 2025

Midnight is a sidechain focused on privacy and data protection within the Cardano ecosystem.

According to Hoskinson, the implementation of the CIP-8 protocol in wallets limits the message size to 31 bytes. The payload for Glacier Drop is 251 bytes.

He emphasized that the Cardano team informed Ledger of the issue back in July, but no timeline for a firmware update was provided.

To address the problem, the team will employ a workaround. It involves signing an empty transaction, where the 251-byte Glacier Drop payload will be added as metadata. This method is common in the NFT segment.

The Glacier airdrop portal will automatically update to support this method. Hoskinson recommended that users experiencing issues try again towards the end of August. He noted that the airdrop will last for two months, so there is no need to rush.

The Cardano founder added that such specific cases are a reality when launching products for multiple ecosystems and wallets. The team cannot control third-party developers.

Midnight Foundation President Fahmi Sayed also informed Decrypt about discussions with wallet representatives. He added that similar difficulties affected users in the XRP and Avalanche networks.

Midnight Foundation also expects to present its own solution to the issue by August 25.

Sayed advised users not to use unofficial methods to circumvent the problem. He reminded them of the emergence of fake websites and fraudulent offers.

Despite the technical challenges, the airdrop is highly popular. In the first few hours, users of eight networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, received over 120 million NIGHT tokens. The window for claiming tokens remains open for 60 days.

Back in May, Hoskinson revealed that Midnight tokens would be distributed among 37 million wallets across eight blockchains.