The majority of EVM apps presuppose that the world is public. It is not an ethical decision, it is simply the way Ethereum-like systems developed. Contract state, outputs, and inputs are all public. It's transparent by default. The negative thing is self-evident: DeFi leaks it all. Positions can also be tracked, trades can be imitated and sensitive trades can be hacked.
Herein lies one cause of serious finance hesitation. Institutions do not desire privacy in some place. They require seclusion in the areas where the actual logic occurs trading systems, lending systems, settlement flows, and order processing. In case such apps compromise sensitive information, then the market becomes manipulable.
Dusk has provided a privacy engine, called Hedger, that is targeted at the DuskEVM environment. Dusk explains that Hedger puts together concepts such as homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to enable confidential operation whilst remaining audit-compatible. Simply stated: the idea is to render privacy practical within the EVM ecosystem, where the majority of developers are already developing, and the majority of crypto liquidity and tooling is already available.
Why does this matter? Since the feasible course of action to adoption is "EVS compatibility. In case you inform builders that they will have to acquire a whole new ecosystem, then most of them will not. By providing them with an environment that they know, but with privacy that is provided in a well-organized fashion, the barrier is lowered, and possibilities increased.
Simple example is the regulated trading. When an order book is entirely public, traders are allowed to game it front-run, spoof or copy big players. In case all this is completely private and unregulated, the regulators will not permit it. Dusk has discussed such notions as obfuscated order books since that middle-ground is what actually regulates markets: secrecy of fair trading, and auditability where necessary.
This makes Hedger a significant new element to speak about. It is also not the typical privacy-chain clichéd story of "keep it a secret. It is privacy-engineered to be compatible with EVM composability - and composability is where the process of building and adoption is far simpler.
