In the crypto world, privacy and compliance are often seen as mutually exclusive—privacy advocates think transparency equals surveillance, while compliance proponents believe secrecy equals money laundering. But in a truly regulated financial system, these two things must actually operate simultaneously.

Think about the logic of financial markets: once counterparty information, real holdings, and sources of funds are exposed, information asymmetry can be immediately exploited by clever players, causing the entire market to be strategically scrutinized and torn apart. At the same time, the financial system must undergo rigorous audits, anti-money laundering checks, and a barrage of compliance reports. If you fail to do both well, you won't earn the trust of the market or the approval of regulators.

Therefore, sustainable on-chain finance is not a simple choice between privacy or transparency; it’s a more complex engineering challenge—requiring precise design of each process and permission.

The reason Dusk has recently gained more serious attention is precisely here. It doesn’t treat privacy as a mere marketing gimmick or compliance as empty words in promotional copy. Instead, it directly integrates privacy and auditability into the application layer, creating a set of components that developers and institutions can genuinely use.

By early 2026: DuskEVM plans to launch on the mainnet in the second week of January, Hedger has already released an alpha version, and DuskTrade, aimed at regulated securities and investment funds, will officially launch in 2026 (open for the waiting list in January). At the same time, over 300 million euros worth of tokenized securities will be moved onto the chain. These events together no longer make it a vague statement like "we are suitable for regulated scenarios," but instead use a concrete architecture to deconstruct and implement the core contradictions of regulated finance one by one.