Dusk has been pondering one thing since 2018—how to make blockchain both private and compliant. This team ultimately built a Layer 1 public chain, with the core selling point being a modular architecture combined with built-in privacy protection. It sounds ideal, but the problem is: traditional finance’s requirements for transparency and auditing have severely limited the development space for most privacy chains.

Dusk’s approach is different. They spent over seven years refining a privacy technology stack, offering users two options—either transparent transfers or privacy mode. When in privacy mode, transaction details are completely locked down; your financial strategies, transfer targets, and amounts are all hidden. But here’s a clever design: through selective disclosure, regulatory authorities can still perform audits without exposing all transaction details, proving compliance.

This "compliant privacy" system is built on zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption. In other words, transactions are private yet verifiable—especially useful in sensitive financial scenarios. Large institutions can conduct hundreds of millions or billions in transactions without fear of competitors uncovering their strategies, while retail users truly gain financial sovereignty. Other privacy chains often have to choose between privacy and compliance, but Dusk seamlessly integrates both.

Last year, the release of DuskEVM accelerated this process. It’s an application layer compatible with EVM, allowing developers to directly migrate Solidity contracts from Ethereum, with settlement happening on Dusk’s Layer 1. This greatly reduces migration costs for developers and makes it easier for projects within the Ethereum ecosystem to enter this new world of privacy and compliance. From RWA tokenization to institutional-grade DeFi, Dusk is building a comprehensive infrastructure matrix.