Ashley Cooper

Earlier, we delved into the internal logic of Dusk. Today, let us widen our perspective and place it within a broader industry coordinate system, examining the real competitive landscape it faces: is it struggling in a crowded red sea, or does it occupy a unique advantageous position?

First, in the core battlefield of 'RWA asset issuance', Dusk is surrounded by giants. Represented by public chains like Ondo, Polygon, and major traditional financial giants directly collaborating (such as Ethereum, Stellar), they have become the preferred choice for standard assets like government bonds and money market funds on-chain due to their established ecosystems, deep liquidity, and strong brand reputation. Dusk does not have an advantage if it competes for such 'transparent' assets.@Dusk
Secondly, in the traditional field of 'privacy protection,' it also has to face mature predecessors like Monero and Zcash. These projects have stronger brand recognition for anonymity and community consensus, but under the current global regulatory wave, their survival space is being squeezed, which in turn creates a timely opportunity for Dusk's 'compliance privacy' narrative.
Therefore, Dusk's real strategy is 'flanking maneuver' rather than direct assault. It precisely targets a critical intersection that is still blank but has clear demand: serving those with strong privacy needs who must also accept strict regulation, non-standardized RWA assets. This includes private equity, non-public bonds, complex structured products, etc., which traditional RWA platforms find difficult to reach due to transparency issues, while established privacy coins cannot serve this 'niche market' due to compliance issues.$DUSK
Its core competitive barrier is the deep integration of 'compliance licenses' and 'auditable privacy technology.'
1. License Advantage: Through in-depth equity cooperation with the regulated Dutch exchange NPEX, Dusk has obtained a 'ticket' to directly access the regulated financial system, which is not easily replicable at the technical level. 2. Technical Integration: Its privacy is not an external module but is natively designed from the consensus layer (SBA) to the execution layer (Hedger, DuskEVM), providing a smoother and safer experience.
For $DUSK , this competitive positioning means: its value does not depend on whether it can become the first in a single track, but on whether it can establish an unshakeable first-mover advantage and network effects in the 'compliance privacy finance' niche market it has pioneered. If successful, it will enjoy a profit zone with relatively mild competition and very high customer stickiness.

Tomorrow, we will temporarily set aside optimism and calmly examine the potential risks and challenges that Dusk must face on its path to its vision.
#dusk

Earlier, we delved into the internal logic of Dusk. Today, let us widen our perspective and place it within a broader industry coordinate system, examining the real competitive landscape it faces: is it struggling in a crowded red sea, or does it occupy a unique advantageous position?
First, in the core battlefield of 'RWA asset issuance', Dusk is surrounded by giants. Represented by public chains like Ondo, Polygon, and major traditional financial giants directly collaborating (such as Ethereum, Stellar), they have become the preferred choice for standard assets like government bonds and money market funds on-chain due to their established ecosystems, deep liquidity, and strong brand reputation. Dusk does not have an advantage if it competes for such 'transparent' assets.@Dusk

Secondly, in the traditional field of 'privacy protection,' it also has to face mature predecessors like Monero and Zcash. These projects have stronger brand recognition for anonymity and community consensus, but under the current global regulatory wave, their survival space is being squeezed, which in turn creates a timely opportunity for Dusk's 'compliance privacy' narrative.
Therefore, Dusk's real strategy is 'flanking maneuver' rather than direct assault. It precisely targets a critical intersection that is still blank but has clear demand: serving those with strong privacy needs who must also accept strict regulation, non-standardized RWA assets. This includes private equity, non-public bonds, complex structured products, etc., which traditional RWA platforms find difficult to reach due to transparency issues, while established privacy coins cannot serve this 'niche market' due to compliance issues.$DUSK
Its core competitive barrier is the deep integration of 'compliance licenses' and 'auditable privacy technology.'
1. License Advantage: Through in-depth equity cooperation with the regulated Dutch exchange NPEX, Dusk has obtained a 'ticket' to directly access the regulated financial system, which is not easily replicable at the technical level. 2. Technical Integration: Its privacy is not an external module but is natively designed from the consensus layer (SBA) to the execution layer (Hedger, DuskEVM), providing a smoother and safer experience.

For $DUSK , this competitive positioning means: its value does not depend on whether it can become the first in a single track, but on whether it can establish an unshakeable first-mover advantage and network effects in the 'compliance privacy finance' niche market it has pioneered. If successful, it will enjoy a profit zone with relatively mild competition and very high customer stickiness.
Tomorrow, we will temporarily set aside optimism and calmly examine the potential risks and challenges that Dusk must face on its path to its vision.
#dusk

Dusk Network @Dusk Since its inception in 2018, it has adhered to a clear yet highly challenging positioning—creating a privacy-first Layer 1 blockchain for the regulated financial world. While most public chains pursue 'complete decentralization and absolute anonymity,' Dusk goes against the grain by proposing the concept of 'regulated privacy,' attempting to satisfy both institutional compliance needs and user data confidentiality, two seemingly contradictory goals.
After the mainnet officially launched in 2025, Dusk introduced a core protocol stack called Twilight. This protocol combines zero-knowledge proofs (primarily optimized variants of zk-SNARKs and Bulletproofs), Segregated Byzantine Agreement, and a modular three-layer architecture to achieve complete confidentiality of transaction content while retaining on-chain auditable compliance attributes. In simple terms, regulators can see that 'a certain transaction meets KYC/AML requirements and the amount is within the threshold,' but they cannot see the specific addresses, amounts, or asset details of the parties involved in the transfer. This ability for 'selective disclosure' is the biggest difference between Dusk and traditional privacy coins like Monero and Zcash.
Entering 2026, Dusk's on-chain data has shown significant changes. Santiment shows that the number of daily active addresses has surged from dozens at the beginning of the year to over 300, no longer just a single brushing behavior, but rather growth driven by real RWA projects and institutional testnet migrations. It is known that POL Finance and several European security token issuers have completed economic model audits and small-scale deployments on it. Dusk blocks issue approximately 19.86 DUSK per block, with 80% going to validators and stakers' rewards, and the remaining portion used for ecological funds and development. This relatively restrained inflation model has also been recognized by the community.
Meanwhile, Dusk is actively promoting the development of the EVM+ compatible layer, aiming to allow existing Solidity developers to migrate compliant DeFi protocols at low cost, without having to learn Rust or its proprietary contract language from scratch. This combination of "privacy + compatibility" has created a differentiated barrier for Dusk in the RWA (Real World Assets) track. Compared to Centrifuge, which is more focused on the asset onboarding process, and compared to Ondo, which emphasizes liquidity products, Dusk is attempting to become the underlying settlement and issuance infrastructure directly.
Of course, challenges still exist. Privacy public chains naturally face risks in regulatory gray areas, and Dusk's strategy of "actively embracing compliance" has led some fundamentalist crypto users to question its degree of decentralization. However, from the perspective of institutional capital flow and on-chain activity, this "middle path" seems to be validated by the market. In the first half of 2026, if Dusk can realize a few truly scaled security token issuances or compliant stablecoin settlement cases, it is likely to leap from being a "potential stock" in the privacy track to one of the core players in the "institutional essential track."#dusk $DUSK

Si nous comparons les chaînes publiques de confidentialité de 2021 à 2023 à une 'course aux armements', où chacun compete pour avoir une connaissance zéro plus forte et un mélange plus approfondi, la narration de la confidentialité après 2025 a discrètement évolué vers 'Confidentialité × Conformité × Finance Programmable'. Dusk Network
est à l'avant-garde de cette nouvelle narration.
En juin 2025, Dusk a officiellement annoncé la mise à niveau de son mainnet d'une architecture à une seule couche vers une structure modulaire à trois couches : Couche de Consensus de Base (SegBA), Couche d'Exécution (supportant des contrats intelligents zk), et Couche d'Adaptation d'Application (compatible avec EVM et primitives financières personnalisées). Cette mise à niveau a réduit de manière significative le coût d'accès institutionnel - ce qui prenait auparavant des mois pour personnaliser la logique de conformité peut maintenant être déployé en semaines grâce à des plugins modulaire. Pendant la même période, les données du testnet ont montré un TPS stable entre 800-1200 (grâce à l'exécution parallèle et à la compression zk), avec un surcoût de confidentialité contrôlé dans des limites acceptables.

In early 2026, a seemingly insignificant piece of news circulated in the crypto circle: a European mid-sized asset management company passed part of its private equity fund share through Dusk Network @Dusk Complete on-chain distribution and secondary circulation. This is not a proof of concept, but a real case with funding scale. And this is the watershed moment in Dusk's journey from marginal privacy projects to institutional-level financial infrastructure.

Dusk's core selling point can be summarized in one sentence: it allows institutions to complete on-chain securities issuance, trading, settlement and compliance reporting without exposing trade secrets and customer identities. While traditional blockchains are either too transparent (Ethereum) or too opaque (Monero), Dusk offers a third path ——“controllable transparency + enforced privacy”.
Technically, the Twilight protocol is its largest moat. Transactions use zk to prove that the hidden amount is related to the participants, but the supervisory node can verify whether the transaction complies with the pre-written compliance rules through a preset viewing key (viewing key). This design makes Dusk one of the first public chains to truly meet the MiCA (EU Cryptoasset Regulation), SEC requirements and GDPR data privacy requirements at the same time.
In terms of ecological progress, from the end of 2025 to the beginning of 2026, the activity on the Dusk chain showed a step-by-step increase. The number of daily active addresses exceeded 300, and the number of daily transactions remained stable at thousands. What is more, these increases are mainly due to RWA-type applications rather than speculative brush volume. Several projects have publicly stated that they are migrating some asset issuance processes to Dusk, including but not limited to real estate shares, carbon credits, art income rights, etc.
The token model also stabilized. DUSK's multifunctional positioning as a gas fee, staking, governance and settlement asset is becoming increasingly clear. Compared to some high-inflation projects, Dusk's fixed block output and gradually decreasing ecological distribution show the intention of long-term sustainability. The market also responded——In January 2026, DUSK prices rose rapidly, partly due to the quiet entry of institutional funds.

Of course, Dusk is not without risk. Privacy technology itself is complex and difficult to audit; compliance routes may also encounter different interpretations in different jurisdictions; and the EVM compatibility layer still needs time to be polished. But when you pull the timeline back to 2026, you discover a fact: it is precisely the richest institutions that need privacy the most. And Dusk is becoming their most likely choice for a privacy settlement layer.
If several tens of millions of euros worth of on-chain securities issuance are seen in the second half of 2026, Dusk is likely to be officially promoted from “an interesting privacy project” to “the underlying standard for RWA and compliant DeFi”.#dusk $DUSK

Avant qu'il n'apparaisse #dusk les développeurs de solutions blockchain faisaient souvent face à un dilemme insurmontable : la transparence totale du réseau ou la confidentialité des données des utilisateurs. Avec la mise en œuvre de DuskEVM de @Dusk ce problème appartient officiellement au passé. C'est la première machine virtuelle au monde qui prend en charge entièrement les contrats intelligents sensibles, permettant la construction d'applications décentralisées complexes où la logique d'exécution et les soldes des portefeuilles restent cachés des regards indiscrets.

Pour l'écosystème $DUSK cela marque le début d'un véritable essor des nouvelles dApps. Imaginez des échanges décentralisés privés (DEX) où vos stratégies sont protégées par des droits d'auteur, ou des systèmes de vote où les choix de chaque membre sont sécurisés par cryptage. Il est important de noter que le réseau reste évolutif et rapide grâce au consensus unique de l'Attestation Succincte. Dusk prouve de manière convaincante que la vie privée ne devrait pas être un compromis pour la performance, créant un environnement fiable pour les développeurs de prochaine génération.

Le marché des actifs tokenisés du monde réel (RWA) est prévu par des experts pour atteindre des proportions incroyables en 2026, et @Dusk bâtit l'infrastructure nécessaire pour transférer ce capital en ligne. Le principal obstacle pour les RWA sur les blockchains publiques traditionnelles a toujours été le manque de confidentialité et la difficulté de passer par des procédures KYC sans risquer des fuites de données. Le protocole Citadel développé par l'équipe #dusk , aborde ces problèmes en permettant aux utilisateurs de vérifier leur identité avec des certificats ZK sans réellement transférer de données personnelles sensibles.

After the previous discussions, we clarified that Dusk aims to provide an 'auditable privacy' on-chain environment for high-value RWA assets. Today, we focus on its first and most critical heavyweight application — the DuskTrade platform, examining how it transforms a grand technological concept into concrete business practices and revenue streams.

DuskTrade is not just another decentralized exchange (DEX); its essence is that of a regulated digital asset securities exchange. Its core partner is the Dutch licensed exchange NPEX. This partnership is crucial: NPEX holds a license issued by the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), providing the platform with an established, legitimate financial trading venue identity. Dusk's role is to provide blockchain underlying technology support for this compliant venue, particularly its privacy execution environment.@Dusk
The platform's initial goal is to plan to tokenize and migrate over 300 million euros of existing traditional securities (such as small and medium-sized enterprise stocks and bonds) onto the chain by 2026. This means that transactions will be settled on Dusk's blockchain, enjoying instant finality and 24/7 operational efficiency, while all transaction details will be encrypted by Hedger technology by default. For regulators, they can conduct audits through NPEX's existing channels; for irrelevant parties in the market, they will not be able to glimpse specific transaction amounts and counterparties. This perfectly aligns with regulations like Europe's MiFID II regarding transaction transparency and reporting requirements while protecting the commercial privacy of market participants.
From a technical implementation perspective, DuskTrade relies on the complete compatibility of DuskEVM to lower the development and usage barriers. At the same time, its collaboration with the oracle giant Chainlink in cross-chain and data aspects ensures the reliability of on-chain asset prices and liquidations. It can be said to be a showcase of all core technologies of Dusk.

For holders of $DUSK , the advancement of DuskTrade means that token demand will shift significantly from 'staking-driven' to 'gas consumption-driven.' Every asset issuance, transaction, and settlement on the platform requires burning DUSK as fuel. If 300 million euros or even larger-scale assets can generate sustained on-chain trading activity, it will create predictable and continuous token consumption demand. This is a key step in whether its economic model can form a value closed loop.
Of course, whether the platform can go live as scheduled and attract sufficient liquidity remains the biggest variable to observe. #dusk

Hier, nous avons discuté du positionnement technique de Dusk pour la 'vie privée conforme', et aujourd'hui nous voulons poser une question plus pratique : à qui cette technologie sert-elle exactement ? La réponse pointe vers un domaine actuellement en vogue et aussi traditionnel : les actifs du monde réel (RWA) d'une valeur de trillions de dollars.
Actuellement, la vague de tokenisation des RWA est imparable. Des actifs standardisés tels que les obligations du Trésor américain et les fonds monétaires sont massivement mis sur la chaîne grâce aux mises en page de géants comme BlackRock. Cependant, cette 'avenue ensoleillée' est principalement applicable aux actifs sous-jacents semblables à des liquidités qui nécessitent une transparence extrêmement élevée. Lorsque les institutions financières tentent de migrer davantage d'actifs fondamentaux de grande valeur, non standardisés—comme les actions d'entreprise, les obligations privées, le crédit à risque, ou même les parts de fonds immobiliers—vers la blockchain, une contradiction fondamentale surgit : une transparence complète sur la chaîne exposera leurs secrets commerciaux les plus sensibles.

Lors de la présentation d'hier, nous avons mentionné que Dusk se positionne comme une infrastructure financière 'conforme à la vie privée'. Aujourd'hui, nous approfondissons une question clé : Sous la pression de la réglementation, les pièces de monnaie de confidentialité ont-elles encore un avenir ? La réponse donnée par Dusk pourrait bien être sa plus grande valeur.

Actuellement, les pièces de monnaie de confidentialité traditionnelles font face à une crise de survie sans précédent. Prenons Monero comme exemple, il atteint une anonymat obligatoire et introuvable grâce à des technologies comme les signatures en anneau, qui est en effet le summum de la protection de la vie privée mais qui en fait également une 'épine dans le flanc' des agences réglementaires mondiales. D'un départ forcé de plusieurs échanges traditionnels à des interdictions explicites récentes sur le trading de tels actifs dans des lieux comme Dubaï, son espace de développement est continuellement compressé.