There is an organization in the Netherlands called Dusk Foundation, established in 2018, bringing together cryptographers, financial practitioners, and blockchain developers. What are they doing? They aim to build a financial infrastructure that protects privacy, meets regulatory requirements, and remains decentralized, enabling true integration of traditional finance and DeFi.

In January last year, their led Dusk Network officially launched its mainnet. This Layer 1 blockchain is quite interesting—a privacy chain specifically designed for regulated financial markets, a pioneering concept worldwide. It uses PlonK zero-knowledge proof technology, with the core idea that transaction details are completely hidden externally, but regulatory agencies can verify compliance requirements like KYC/AML through encrypted proofs. It sounds contradictory, but this is their unique design approach.

This "privacy equals compliance" solution allows institutions to do what? Directly issue, trade, and settle real-world assets—such as bonds, stocks, and securities—on the chain. The benefits are obvious: first, no need to expose sensitive information; second, significantly reduced intermediary costs; third, settlement speed is ridiculously fast—moving from traditional T+2 to instant settlement.

Regarding technical architecture, they adopt a modular design: DuskDS handles efficient PoS consensus, Rusk VM supports privacy smart contract execution, and DuskEVM (scheduled to go live in Q4 2025) will add EVM compatibility, attracting more developers to participate in the ecosystem.