On the winter night balcony, I am reviewing the progress of the Dusk Network project. This chain has never been a noisy player in the bull market; instead, it resembles a seasoned craftsman working diligently—coding since 2018, quietly launching its mainnet last January without airdrops or publicity. The genesis block was born just like that.

A year has passed, with no crashes, no hacks, and no major headlines. It’s just there, growing slowly. The DuskDS upgrade makes the data layer faster and more stable, while DuskEVM lowers the barrier for developers—writing contracts is now like writing regular code. Add a privacy tag, and the transaction becomes invisible. Your positions, amounts, and all intentions are hidden from others, but regulators can audit at any time. This isn’t science fiction; this is how the underlying protocol is designed.

The most interesting event was the partnership in November last year. Dusk joined hands with NPEX (a licensed Dutch exchange), which holds real European securities worth over 200 million euros. They put these assets on-chain, using Chainlink’s cross-chain bridge and real-time price oracles, allowing assets to flow on-chain without leaving traces. Starting in January this year, the STOX platform took small steps—testing with a few securities, issuing, trading, and settling on-chain, gradually exploring the waters. I watched the on-chain data, and the first tokenized bond transaction record was right there.

Currently, the $DUSK price fluctuates around $0.058, with a market cap of $29 million and a staking rate of 36%. The gas consumption on-chain pulses like a heartbeat—slow but steady climbing. There’s no explosive data, but that precisely indicates that this is real and accumulating.

Unlike projects that chase hot topics and tell stories, Dusk is doing something more difficult: building a chain that truly encourages institutions to put assets in. Making privacy and compliance no longer oppose each other, but coexist within the same set of rules. In this industry, which is often overhyped, it chooses silence and refinement.

When institutional money truly flows in, when STOX scales up, and more real assets breathe on-chain, this lunar cycle will rise even higher. For now, perhaps, it’s just a quiet waiting period.