@Dusk keeps getting called "unique" for combining privacy and compliance. It is not, not really.
I kept seeing the same line repeated in #dusk write-ups. Privacy and regulatory compliance, together, first of its kind. So I went and checked who else is actually working on that exact problem, and its a more crowded room than the marketing lets on.
Zcash has been doing shielded-but-optional transparency since 2016, thats basically the same tension, hide by default, reveal when needed. Aleo is building a full Layer 1 around private, general-purpose computation, not just payments. Aztec is doing something similar but as a privacy layer sitting on top of Ethereum instead of its own chain. Even Origo, a much smaller, less talked about project, was pitching private-but-auditable infrastructure back in 2018, years before Dusk had a working mainnet.
What actually is different, and I want to be fair here, is who each of these is building for. Aleo and Aztec both lean toward general private computation, apps, games, arbitrary logic that happens to also be private. $DUSK narrows in specifically on regulated finance, tokenized securities, licensed exchanges, the NPEX kind of real-world deal. Thats a real distinction, not nothing. Its not a unique idea though, its a different target market for a shared idea a handful of teams have been chasing for years.
I think the honest version of Dusks pitch is not "We invented private compliant finance". Its "We picked a narrower, more boring, more regulated lane than Aleo or Aztec did, and we are betting that lane matters more to actual institutions." Thats a smaller claim. It also happens to be the one I find more believable.
I kept seeing the same line repeated in #dusk write-ups. Privacy and regulatory compliance, together, first of its kind. So I went and checked who else is actually working on that exact problem, and its a more crowded room than the marketing lets on.
Zcash has been doing shielded-but-optional transparency since 2016, thats basically the same tension, hide by default, reveal when needed. Aleo is building a full Layer 1 around private, general-purpose computation, not just payments. Aztec is doing something similar but as a privacy layer sitting on top of Ethereum instead of its own chain. Even Origo, a much smaller, less talked about project, was pitching private-but-auditable infrastructure back in 2018, years before Dusk had a working mainnet.
What actually is different, and I want to be fair here, is who each of these is building for. Aleo and Aztec both lean toward general private computation, apps, games, arbitrary logic that happens to also be private. $DUSK narrows in specifically on regulated finance, tokenized securities, licensed exchanges, the NPEX kind of real-world deal. Thats a real distinction, not nothing. Its not a unique idea though, its a different target market for a shared idea a handful of teams have been chasing for years.
I think the honest version of Dusks pitch is not "We invented private compliant finance". Its "We picked a narrower, more boring, more regulated lane than Aleo or Aztec did, and we are betting that lane matters more to actual institutions." Thats a smaller claim. It also happens to be the one I find more believable.
