Midnight Moves Mainnet RPC and Indexer to Blockfrost

Midnight retired its own public mainnet RPC and indexer endpoints on September 30 at 22:00 UTC. Blockfrost now provides the primary public access to those services, changing how applications and wallets connect to the production network.

Midnight Mainnet Endpoints Are Retired

The change covers rpc.mainnet.midnight.network and indexer.mainnet.midnight.network. According to Midnight’s documentation, the indexer hostname stopped resolving on October 1. The former RPC endpoint still answers requests, but it can stop at any time.

Midnight is a data protection blockchain within the Cardano ecosystem. Its smart contracts can verify conditions using zero-knowledge proofs while sensitive inputs remain private. Applications depend on network services to read blockchain records, follow contract activity, and submit transactions.

Node RPC handles communication with the network node, including transaction submission. The indexer organizes blocks, transactions, contract state, and wallet-related events for applications to retrieve or follow through live subscriptions.

Blockfrost Adds Authentication and Usage Limits

Blockfrost provides hosted blockchain APIs, giving developers access to network data and transaction submission without operating the underlying infrastructure themselves. Its Midnight service supports GraphQL queries and WebSocket subscriptions alongside node RPC.

Access requires a Blockfrost project created specifically for Midnight Mainnet. Each request must include its project_id, either through an HTTP header or a URL parameter. Requests without a valid token are rejected, and tokens issued for other networks cannot authenticate mainnet access.

Usage counts against the application’s own Blockfrost plan. Teams can select a plan suited to their traffic or run an independent node and indexer, which Midnight continues to support. A paid plan is not mandatory for every application.

This API authentication is separate from transaction funding. Midnight transactions consume DUST, the resource generated by registered NIGHT tokens.

The documentation also warns that tokens exposed in browser-side code can be copied and used against a project’s quota. It describes routing requests through a backend that adds the token on the server when applications need to keep it private.

Some Wallets May Need to Rebuild Synchronization State

Preview and Preprod retain their Midnight-hosted endpoints without project authentication. The local proof server, which handles private inputs during proof generation, also remains outside Blockfrost’s service.

For existing mainnet wallets, the migration can extend beyond connection settings. Midnight’s service desk runbook identifies a compatibility issue when a wallet resumes synchronization state saved against the former indexer. Event and transaction identifiers can differ between providers, leaving stored references unsuitable for the new indexer.

Wallets already connected to Blockfrost or their own indexer are unaffected by the provider change. The same applies to wallets that synchronize from genesis on every startup and applications that only read contract state or submit transactions without retaining indexer-issued identifiers.

If an affected wallet stalls with errors indicating events are being applied out of sequence, the runbook calls for discarding its saved synchronization state and rebuilding it from genesis through the new indexer.