Matjaz Mihelj

From today’s Binance hack, no $ADA or $NIGHT tokens were stolen. And for a good reason: - The attackers compromised a hot wallet key and an internal signing service, the same class of breach that has drained other exchanges before. But the ADA and NIGHT balances were not sitting in a simple account style hot wallet. They were held in a Cardano multi signature script (eUTxO) that required an additional on chain authorization from a separate, air gapped key controlled by a different team, plus a timelock that only released after a short challenge window. - Midnight’s privacy layer added a second practical obstacle: the precise amounts and destination addresses were shielded with zk proofs. The attackers could see that “some” assets existed, but they could not confirm exact balances or craft a clean withdrawal transaction without generating valid selective disclosure proofs they did not possess. By the time they realized the funds were not freely spendable under the compromised key, the internal response team had already rotated the remaining signers and frozen the script. - The only assets that left the platform were tokens that relied purely on centralized hot wallet controls. ADA and NIGHT stayed put because their movement was gated by on chain script conditions and privacy constraints that the stolen credentials alone could not satisfy. In short: the keys were compromised, the script conditions and zk requirements were not.