I was reading through Dusk docs and one thing made me look at its privacy setup a little differently.
I originally assumed privacy on Dusk worked like a simple switch: transactions are either private or they aren’t. But that’s not really how it works.
Dusk has Moonlight and Phoenix, and they serve pretty different purposes. Moonlight is closer to what most of us are used to on public chains, where balances and transaction details are visible. Phoenix uses encrypted notes and zero-knowledge proofs, so the transaction can be verified without putting all of its details in public.
The part I found more interesting was viewing keys.
A Phoenix transaction can stay private from the public while the user can still give specific parties access to certain information. That sounds like a small detail, but for financial applications it makes quite a bit of sense. Privacy is useful, but businesses may still need to show records to auditors or other authorized parties.
There is a downside though.
Having two transaction models means users actually need to know which one they’re using. Someone could hear “Dusk is privacy-focused” and assume every transaction automatically has the same level of privacy. That isn’t the case.
I actually prefer thinking about Dusk this way: it’s less about hiding everything and more about controlling what becomes public and what doesn’t.
I’m curious whether this kind of selective privacy will be easier for real financial institutions to work with than fully private-by-default systems.
$DUSK @Dusk #dusk
I originally assumed privacy on Dusk worked like a simple switch: transactions are either private or they aren’t. But that’s not really how it works.
Dusk has Moonlight and Phoenix, and they serve pretty different purposes. Moonlight is closer to what most of us are used to on public chains, where balances and transaction details are visible. Phoenix uses encrypted notes and zero-knowledge proofs, so the transaction can be verified without putting all of its details in public.
The part I found more interesting was viewing keys.
A Phoenix transaction can stay private from the public while the user can still give specific parties access to certain information. That sounds like a small detail, but for financial applications it makes quite a bit of sense. Privacy is useful, but businesses may still need to show records to auditors or other authorized parties.
There is a downside though.
Having two transaction models means users actually need to know which one they’re using. Someone could hear “Dusk is privacy-focused” and assume every transaction automatically has the same level of privacy. That isn’t the case.
I actually prefer thinking about Dusk this way: it’s less about hiding everything and more about controlling what becomes public and what doesn’t.
I’m curious whether this kind of selective privacy will be easier for real financial institutions to work with than fully private-by-default systems.
$DUSK @Dusk #dusk