How to buy NIGHT on Cardano

Two sentences, then on with it

What is NIGHT, and why is it on Cardano?

NIGHT is the unshielded native and governance token of Midnight, the privacy network in the Cardano ecosystem, and holding it is what generates DUST, the resource Midnight uses to pay for transactions (midnight.network/night, checked September 11, 2026). Midnight launched the token on Cardano first, as a Cardano Native Asset, on December 4, 2025, which is why you can buy it, hold it and verify it with the same tools you use for any other Cardano token (midnight.network blog, checked September 11, 2026). The longer story is in our Midnight network explainer.

Claiming and buying are different routes, worth separating before you spend anything. Allocations claimed in the Glacier Drop, the Scavenger Mine and the Lost-and-Found phase, 4.55 billion NIGHT in total, are redeemed through Midnight's own portal in four equal installments 90 days apart, with the thawing period ending on December 4, 2026 and a 90-day grace period after that (midnight.network blog, checked September 11, 2026). Buying on an exchange has nothing to do with that schedule: you are buying tokens that are already in circulation, from whoever is selling them.

The identifier that matters

What is the official NIGHT policy ID?

The policy ID is 0691b2fecca1ac4f53cb6dfb00b7013e561d1f34403b957cbb5af1facopy

Midnight publishes that string on its own token page with the token's hex name appended, as 0691b2fecca1ac4f53cb6dfb00b7013e561d1f34403b957cbb5af1fa4e49474854 (midnight.network/night, checked September 11, 2026). The first 56 characters are the policy ID, and the trailing 4e49474854 is the asset name in hexadecimal, which decodes to the five letters NIGHT. Put the two together and you have the full asset id, which is what an explorer's search box wants. The asset fingerprint, a shorter checksummed form of the same thing, is asset1wd3llgkhsw6etxf2yca6cgk9ssrpva3wf0pq9a.

The Cardano Foundation's token registry carries a signed entry for that asset with the name NIGHT, the ticker NIGHT, six decimals and midnight.network as the project URL (cardano-token-registry mapping file, checked September 11, 2026). Six decimals matters in practice: your wallet shows whole NIGHT while the chain counts millionths, so an explorer's raw figures run a million times larger. You can read the same entry through Cardanoscan or Cexplorer, and our policy ID verification guide walks through the check itself.

Venues

Where does NIGHT trade on Cardano?

On-chain, the NIGHT pools indexed by GeckoTerminal, CoinGecko's decentralised exchange data service, all sit on Minswap: NIGHT against ADA, and NIGHT against tokens and stablecoins including USDCx, USDM, iUSD, DJED, SNEK and MIN (GeckoTerminal NIGHT/ADA pool page, checked September 11, 2026). ADA is the pair to use unless you are deliberately swapping out of a stablecoin.

You do not have to pick the venue yourself. DexHunter lists NIGHT and routes an order across Cardano exchanges, splitting it between pools when that gets you more tokens (DexHunter's own NIGHT page, checked September 11, 2026). It charges a service fee on top of the exchange fee, shown before you sign, so compare the minimum received rather than the headline rate. Our Minswap and DexHunter walkthrough covers both interfaces screen by screen.

NIGHT also trades on centralised exchanges, which matters mainly for how you get it out. Kraken opened NIGHT trading on December 9, 2025, and warns that a deposit sent over a network it does not support is lost (Kraken listing post, checked September 11, 2026). Binance opened spot trading on March 11, 2026 against USDT, USDC, BNB and TRY, and lists two withdrawal networks for NIGHT, BNB Smart Chain and Cardano (Binance announcement, checked September 11, 2026). If you buy on an exchange and want the token in your own wallet, choose the Cardano network on the withdrawal screen. Tokens sent over the wrong network do not arrive at a Cardano address.

The buy

How do I buy NIGHT, step by step?

1. Get ADA into a self-custody wallet. Buy ADA on an exchange you already use and withdraw it to your own wallet's receive address, sending a small test amount first. The ADA buying and withdrawal guide covers that end to end, and the wallet comparison helps if you do not have one yet.
2. Copy the policy ID from a source you trust. Take it from midnight.network/night or from the copy button above, never from a search result or a direct message.
3. Open the exchange and connect your wallet. Type the address yourself or use a bookmark. Connecting lets the site read your addresses; it cannot move funds.
4. Pick the pair by pasting the policy ID. ADA on the top, NIGHT on the bottom. Paste rather than type the ticker, because a ticker is not unique on Cardano and a policy ID is.
5. Read the quote, then sign. Check the price impact and the minimum received, approve the transaction in your wallet, and wait. A Cardano exchange order settles in a second transaction submitted by a batcher, so it shows as pending for a short while.

After the swap

How do I check that the right token landed?

Open the token in your wallet, view its details, and compare the policy ID with the one on Midnight's site, character by character. A matching name or logo proves nothing; a matching policy ID is the proof. Then look the transaction up on an explorer to see what was actually sent and received, which our transaction reading guide walks through, and use the policy ID guide if the wallet shows the token as unverified or with a raw hex name, which a real token can do when the wallet has not picked up its registry entry.

Costs

What does it cost, and how much spare ADA do I need?

Minswap removed batcher fees for users in May 2025, so a swap there costs the pool's trading fee plus the ordinary Cardano network fee (docs.minswap.org, checked September 11, 2026). The network fee itself is a formula, a fixed part plus a charge per byte of transaction, both of them protocol parameters that Cardano's update system can change (docs.cardano.org, checked September 11, 2026); our fees guide has the numbers.

Keep more ADA than the swap needs. Every Cardano output has to carry a minimum amount of ada, and an output holding native tokens needs more of it than a plain ADA output (docs.cardano.org, checked September 11, 2026). That is why a wallet drained to zero ADA cannot move the tokens sitting inside it. Leaving a few spare ADA behind avoids that.

Reference

NIGHT at a glance

Related: all guides · swap on Minswap and DexHunter · how to buy SNEK · how to buy HOSKY