Looking back at Dusk Network in early 2026, this project that has been brewing for six years has finally launched its mainnet. Starting from 2018, they have been designing and refining a privacy-first Layer-1 protocol, and now it’s truly live. There were progress along the way, but it wasn’t until the first immutable block was finalized that it felt like moving from paper to actual operational capability.

The technical approach remains consistent: combining zero-knowledge proofs and ring signatures to enable transactions that protect privacy while meeting compliance requirements. In the blockchain world, everyone knows that transparency is a double-edged sword—facilitating verification but exposing wallet addresses, which can make RWA (Real-World Asset) institutions unable to operate. The core problem Dusk Network aims to solve is this: you can transact normally on a public network, but the holdings and amounts of both parties are black boxes to outsiders. It sounds simple, but the real implementation relies on the Segregated Byzantine Agreement consensus combined with ZK-SNARKs, striking a balance between performance and privacy. Achieving sub-second transaction confirmation times, institutional-level settlement standards, and controlled energy consumption—unlike some chains that burn through electricity like crazy.

Recently, their collaboration with NPEX on a project is quite interesting—a securities tokenization plan worth hundreds of millions of euros. Under the strict regulatory environment of Europe’s MiCA regulations, obtaining a license-level partner indicates that Dusk is not just talking but actively building real connections between traditional finance and the on-chain world. This isn’t just about issuing a token and claiming RWA; it’s about genuinely enabling banks and custodians to put assets on-chain without worrying about data leaks or regulatory pitfalls. In the current market environment, this level of strength and trustworthiness is especially critical.