This year #dusk going live with DuskEVM—I think it’s more worth pondering than most people assume. The chain’s original positioning was very clear: a privacy compliance infrastructure foundation designed for licensed financial institutions. Phoenix handles private transactions, Moonlight runs transparent settlement, and the differentiation of the whole narrative is that it’s “designed specifically for regulatory scenarios.” Now with an added layer of EVM compatibility, the logic is obviously to bring Ethereum ecosystem developers and liquidity in. In the short term, that can indeed boost TVL and trading-activity metrics. But there’s a contradiction that nobody is willing to say directly: EVM compatibility means having to accept Ethereum’s default assumptions of permissionless, anonymous interactions, which is inherently at odds with the original goal of providing compliance infrastructure for licensed institutions. If @Dusk EVM is mainly running MEV bots and farmers farming points, then it’s essentially no different from any other EVM sidechain. The scarcity of “privacy + compliance” that was originally the project’s unique value gets diluted instead. The team will likely argue it’s “walking on two legs,” but resources and narrative attention are limited. It’s hard for one chain to tell well both stories: “compliant issuance for Swiss banks” and “welcome DeFi degens to farm airdrops.” Next, looking at the composition of active addresses on $DUSK EVM may reveal the bigger picture more clearly than the TVL numbers.