Kept assuming Dusk's ($DUSK ) "privacy-preserving finance" pitch meant transactions start shielded and stay that way unless you opt out. #dusk @Dusk Foundation. Went and actually traced how funds move through the Transfer contract and that assumption didn't hold up.
Dusk runs two parallel models — Moonlight, account-based and fully public, and Phoenix, UTXO-based and shielded — and funds don't default to one or the other. You convert between them explicitly: Moonlight balance decreases, a Phoenix note gets created at a stealth address, or the reverse. Exchanges and institutional rails lean on Moonlight for compatibility reasons, since public balances are what most compliance tooling expects. So the entry point for capital coming from NPEX's €200M+ in confirmed issuance is more likely public-first, with shielding happening as a deliberate second step, not a starting condition.
Hmm — that reframes "privacy-preserving finance" for me a bit. It's not one confidential ledger institutions land on. It's a routing decision made per transaction, and the public rail is probably doing more of the heavy lifting than the marketing language suggests.
Makes me wonder how much actual volume ever gets converted into Phoenix once it's already settled comfortably on the transparent side.