Nightmode and Abyss Build Private DeFi With Midnight

SIG Network and Summit Labs presented tools and plans to shield the connections between users’ wallets and their trading activity on Ethereum and Hyperliquid. Their presentations at Midnight Cafe during TOKEN2049 in Singapore covered token swaps, trading accounts and collateral management.

Nightmode Connects Midnight With Ethereum DeFi

SIG Network is developing Nightmode with Midnight, a programmable privacy blockchain in the wider Cardano ecosystem. Its Ethereum integration is available on Stagenet, with mainnet deployment planned alongside Midnight’s ledger v9 upgrade.

SIG Network CEO David Miller-Durand cited Uniswap and Aave as examples. Developers could add privacy to established services without building a new exchange, lending market or liquidity base.

Under the described model, a Midnight smart contract determines permitted actions, while SIG’s network signs transactions from an Ethereum account. Assets remain on Ethereum, with user claims and sensitive records maintained on Midnight. Producing a signature requires cooperation among multiple signers.

Applications include sending ETH, swapping tokens on Uniswap and supplying USDC to Aave. Ethereum transactions still reveal amounts and execution times. The private component protects the internal allocation of funds and the user information behind those activities.

Abyss Develops Private Access to Hyperliquid

Summit Labs is developing Abyss to bring trading positions and collateral across DeFi protocols into a shared system. The team describes this as onchain prime brokerage, intended to let users manage positions across markets from one account.

The team illustrated the problem with a trader who holds funds in a lending protocol but needs to add margin to a Hyperliquid position. That can require withdrawing or borrowing funds, converting assets and transferring them to another platform. Abyss aims to connect those steps.

Its first proposed privacy phase would create a separate Hyperliquid subaccount for each Abyss user, controlled through Midnight. The goal is to protect the link between the original wallet and the trading account. Orders and trading activity would remain public on Hyperliquid.

A later phase would combine multiple users’ activity in a shared account, making individual positions harder to associate with a particular owner.

At the presentation, the team reported that Abyss’s request-for-quote token swap system, or RFQ, was running on Midnight’s Stagenet. Working with SIG Network, it had also developed private swaps connected to Ethereum’s Sepolia test network. The broader position management platform had not publicly launched.

Processing speed remains a development issue. The team reported Stagenet transactions taking more than 60 seconds, including proof generation and execution. It is considering an application-specific chain or an additional layer that would settle to Midnight.

SIG Plans Private Tron Payments

Miller-Durand also outlined plans to extend Midnight’s privacy to Tron payments. He illustrated the need with a taxi ride in Mombasa: a passenger wants to pay for the journey without giving the driver an address that exposes the rest of their wallet activity and holdings.

Payment applications could set rules for accepting funds, use transaction-screening tools and determine which information users disclose to authorized participants. SIG’s roadmap targets December 2026 for the Tron extension.