Global productivity is no longer evolving through small, incremental improvements. It is advancing through structural breaks. In less than a decade, automation, artificial intelligence, and software-native systems have dramatically increased efficiency across multiple sectors. According to McKinsey, up to 60% of economic activities could be partially automated by 2030. Finance cannot remain on the sidelines of this transformation.
Yet today’s financial infrastructure is still largely built for a slower world. Settlement cycles often remain at T+2 or T+3, intermediaries add layers of cost, and fragmented systems limit transparency. On a global scale, the World Bank estimates that operational inefficiencies cost the financial sector over $1 trillion per year.
At the same time, the market’s direction is becoming increasingly clear. By 2025, more than 20 major international banks are already testing or deploying on-chain settlement solutions. Tokenized real-world assets have surpassed $5 billion, while remaining negligible compared to a global financial asset market valued at over $400 trillion. The gap between current adoption and long-term potential is significant.
Digital assets represent the future of finance, but only if they function within real-world constraints. This requires compliance mechanisms embedded at the protocol level, robust privacy guarantees, and settlement systems designed to work reliably from the ground up, not bolted on as an afterthought.
This is where Dusk fits in. The protocol is designed to support natively regulated assets, with direct on-chain settlement and an architecture that balances privacy and legal compliance. Privacy is the default, protecting users and institutions, while compliance can be enforced when regulatory frameworks require it.
Dusk is not built around short-term narratives. It is positioned for a structural shift in finance, where institutions demand infrastructure capable of handling scale, regulation, and long-term stability. The next generation of finance will not be defined by innovation alone, but by systems that can operate efficiently, securely, and sustainably over time.
