DUSK's Two Transaction Models, Moonlight and Phoenix

I was checking a simple transfer flow on Dusk's testnet this evening, switching between a public wallet view and a shielded one for the same test amount. The public side showed everything immediately, sender, recipient, amount. The shielded side showed almost nothing.

I assumed that was just two display modes for the same underlying transaction. That felt reasonable at first.

I was wrong. Moonlight is account-based. Balances sit in the open, and a transfer exposes sender, recipient, and amount by default. Phoenix works differently. Funds sit as encrypted notes instead. There's a zero-knowledge proof behind it that just confirms the transaction checks out, nothing about the amount, the sender, or which notes got spent actually shows up.

Two different transaction models, not two views of one model, and that distinction is the whole point of comparing them at all.

What I kept circling back to, after closing the laptop and coming back to it, is that both still settle through the same place on Dusk. DuskDS handles both. The Transfer Contract accepts either payload type and routes it through the matching verification logic, keeping the network's global state consistent either way.

The choice between Moonlight and Phoenix isn't about which chain to use. It's a choice made per transaction, inside one settlement layer, about how much the rest of the network gets to see.

I still don't know how often builders default to one model over the other when a workflow doesn't strictly require privacy.

If a wallet let you choose per transaction, which model would you reach for by default?

@Dusk #dusk $DUSK #dusk