#dusk $DUSK @Dusk I've been reading about how rough this year has been for Monero on regulated exchanges, and it made me appreciate something about Dusk I'd been taking for granted.
Monero's privacy is mandatory and uniform. Every transaction is shielded, no exceptions, which is exactly why exchanges keep delisting it. Regulators can't tell a legitimate transfer from an illicit one, and rather than sort that out, platforms just remove the asset. Reports this year put Monero's delisting count from major exchanges well into the dozens since 2024. Zcash avoided some of that by making privacy optional, but it still has to convince regulators after the fact that its shielded pool isn't a liability.
Dusk didn't retrofit this problem. Selective disclosure, whitelisting, and auditor visibility through XSC were part of the design from the start, not features bolted on once regulators objected. That's a genuinely different starting point than trying to make a privacy-first coin acceptable to compliance teams after launch.
I don't think that alone makes Dusk's outcome inevitable, though. Getting the privacy-versus-compliance tradeoff architecturally right solves a problem that Monero and Zcash are still fighting. It doesn't solve the separate problem of getting institutions to actually build on unfamiliar infrastructure instead of familiar rails with a compliance wrapper attached.
Avoiding one fight doesn't guarantee winning the next one.
$ONG $COLLECT
Monero's privacy is mandatory and uniform. Every transaction is shielded, no exceptions, which is exactly why exchanges keep delisting it. Regulators can't tell a legitimate transfer from an illicit one, and rather than sort that out, platforms just remove the asset. Reports this year put Monero's delisting count from major exchanges well into the dozens since 2024. Zcash avoided some of that by making privacy optional, but it still has to convince regulators after the fact that its shielded pool isn't a liability.
Dusk didn't retrofit this problem. Selective disclosure, whitelisting, and auditor visibility through XSC were part of the design from the start, not features bolted on once regulators objected. That's a genuinely different starting point than trying to make a privacy-first coin acceptable to compliance teams after launch.
I don't think that alone makes Dusk's outcome inevitable, though. Getting the privacy-versus-compliance tradeoff architecturally right solves a problem that Monero and Zcash are still fighting. It doesn't solve the separate problem of getting institutions to actually build on unfamiliar infrastructure instead of familiar rails with a compliance wrapper attached.
Avoiding one fight doesn't guarantee winning the next one.
$ONG $COLLECT