Today (February 5th), I revisited the Dusk project, and my mindset is somewhat complicated: it is not the kind of project that takes off just because of an announcement. Rather, it resembles the development of a foundational system that can be accepted by regulators without sacrificing privacy — it sounds boring, but in finance, when it comes to implementation, this kind of 'boring' is often more valuable.
First, let's lay out the hard data: the current price of $DUSK is approximately $0.09, with a market cap of about $46-47 million, a 24h trading volume of around $16 million, and liquidity is neither small nor can it be considered 'mainstream'. The hotspot in these two weeks is not in the 'narrative' but rather in the operational and security pressures that have intensified following the mainnet's transition to sustainable operation. Dusk's official team issued an incident notice regarding the bridge in mid-January: it clearly stated that the mainnet was not affected, there were no issues at the protocol layer, but the bridge services would be temporarily suspended for a more comprehensive hardening and security review. I am more inclined to trust this kind of announcement — because being willing to discuss 'where the weaknesses are and how to address them' is more reliable than shouting slogans every day.
Another 'market hotspot' that can be leveraged today is: after market fluctuations and a revival of the privacy sector, there has been a differentiation in capital behavior concerning DUSK. There is summarized information indicating that during a pullback after a period of upward movement, some 'ordinary whales' have been reducing their positions, while top addresses are actually accumulating (for instance, it was mentioned that top addresses have increased their holdings by tens of millions). I do not take this as gospel, but it at least indicates that DUSK's current trading logic has shifted from 'telling stories' to 'focusing on progress + focusing on risk'.
My own conclusion is quite straightforward: Dusk's key to success does not lie in short-term K-lines but in whether it can transform 'compliant and auditable privacy' into reusable financial components — especially after the mainnet, where the 'dirty and tiring work' of bridges, wallets, monitoring, and permissions is what institutions care about the most. The bridge incident's suspension itself is a negative point, but the way it is being handled is a positive point: you can see that it is making up for gaps according to financial-grade standards instead of pretending nothing is wrong.
I will continue to monitor two things about this project: first, whether the pace of bridge restoration and security reinforcement is transparent; second, the real usage after the mainnet (not just trading volume, but whether applications/settlements/fees can hold up).
