The airdrop from the Cardano-affiliated Midnight Foundation is now live, but for holders of XRP there is, for the moment, just a single route to participate. On 6 August, Wietse Wind—founder of XRPL Labs and lead developer of the self-custody Xaman Wallet—told his followers on X that “Xaman Wallet is the only XRP wallet currently officially supported by the project … Only sign in with Xaman is safe (otherwise you’re probably dealing with a scam).” The warning framed the launch of Midnight’s “Glacier” token distribution and set the tone for a security-first approach to an event Wind predicts will attract “spam, scam, uncertainty and crime.”
What XRP Holders Need To Know Now
The Midnight Foundation took its snapshot of XRP balances at Ledger index 96724473. Eligibility begins at precisely 43.29 XRP—about $28 at press time—and scales upward on a pro-rata basis. While balances are checked on the XRP Ledger, the airdrop itself is delivered exclusively to fresh Cardano addresses; the project will not send NIGHT to XRP addresses under any circumstance, forcing cross-chain participation by design. Wind stressed that users “will need a fresh Cardano (ADA) wallet for the claim destination” and that only one claim per identity is allowed.
Midnight has allocated five percent of its 24-billion NIGHT supply—about 1.2 billion tokens—to XRP holders, a figure confirmed in project documentation. The claim window opened at 13:00 UTC on 5 August and will remain live for sixty days. Any tokens left on the table will migrate into a thirty-day “Scavenger Mine,” followed by a four-year “Lost-and-Found” period that allows original claimants to recover uncollected balances.
Because the Glacier claim page operates only on desktop browsers, Wind urged users to type the URL manually—claim.midnight.gd—rather than clicking links that circulate on social media. “There are scams EVERYWHERE pretending to be Xaman / Xaman support / me / my team … TRUST NO ONE,” he wrote, directing anyone with questions to Xaman’s in-app support chat. He repeated the same guidance in an earlier 30 July thread, insisting that users “Trust NO SOCIAL MEDIA. Trust NO WEBSITE. Trust NO DM-MESSAGES. Trust NO (potentially fake) XRPL Labs / Xaman staff on social.”
The developer promised that Xaman will surface step-by-step instructions in a dedicated in-app module—called an xApp—once the Glacier team has finalized its verification flow. Until that notification appears, he told users, “There is currently no action required.” The wallet’s official account reinforced the point hours later: “Don’t trust links on social or in DMs. Expect increased scams, impersonators, and confusion. Use only Xaman’s in-app support for questions. Stay cautious. Stay self-custodial.”
Wind’s insistence on a single supported wallet is rooted in the way Glacier validates claims. Xaman’s transaction-signing format can be recognized programmatically, allowing the airdrop contract to verify ownership without additional middleware. Other wallets could, in theory, integrate the same flow, but Midnight’s developers have opted for a narrow rollout to reduce the attack surface during the claim window.
Any deviation from above, Wind said, is almost certainly a phishing attempt. “We will communicate about this in-app, through an xApp to prevent confusion and scammers taking advantage of the uncertainty on social media,” he wrote. “When users can take action to participate, we will inform our users though in-app communication.”
As the timer on Glacier’s 58-day claim period begins to tick down, the road map for XRP holders is unambiguous: use Xaman, ignore every other link, and wait for the push notification inside the wallet. The tokens themselves may be destined for Cardano, but the gateway—at least for now—remains anchored firmly in the ecosystem, guarded by a developer who has staked his reputation on keeping the doors locked against impostors.
At press time, XRP traded at $2.98.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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