Honestly, I used to get annoyed whenever I heard the word "compliance." I always thought that compliance meant being conservative, slow, and that it would take away all the freedom on the chain.

But then I realized something: we've been imagining blockchain only in the context of retail trading. If you switch to sectors like securities, bonds, fund shares, or electronic currency tokens, you'll see—compliance is not really a choice. It's more like the ground beneath your feet. You have to stand on solid ground to really build a house; otherwise, no matter how high your dreams are, they are just castles in the air.

The Dusk Foundation has been focusing on compliant finance for years. So, many of the things they do might seem not very lively or sexy. But when I connect a few things happening in 2025, I realize they are seriously handling some of the most difficult-to-discuss and easily overlooked aspects.

The most typical example is their recent collaboration with the regulated trading platform NPEX in the Netherlands, and Chainlink on interoperability and data standards.

In November 2025, the official announcement said they would adopt Chainlink's interoperability and data standard system— including CCIP, DataLink, and Data Streams—together with NPEX to bring regulated European securities onto the chain, and then integrate them into a larger decentralized economy system.

At first glance, this might still be a bit confusing. I didn't immediately grasp the point either. But later, I broke it down into several more straightforward questions, and I started to understand the significance of this.

The first question to ask is: where exactly is the bottleneck for putting securities on the chain? Many projects say they lack issuance channels, liquidity, or—