DUSK, established in 2018 as a Layer1 project, has been making frequent moves in recent months. Its core competitive advantage lies in combining privacy protection with regulatory compliance, exploring a differentiated path in the DeFi and RWA sectors.

Let's first look at the latest technical developments. The DuskEVM mainnet is scheduled to go live in the second week of January, allowing developers to directly deploy Solidity smart contracts while enjoying the underlying settlement capabilities of DUSK Layer1. The benefits of this compatibility solution are obvious—reducing the learning curve for developers and minimizing friction and costs associated with cross-chain interactions. For teams aiming to build DeFi or RWA applications within a compliant framework, this effectively opens a new door.

More notably, the DuskTrade project. In partnership with the licensed Dutch exchange NPEX, DUSK plans to launch this on-chain trading platform in 2026. NPEX holds full licenses for MTF, Broker, and ECSP, bringing in approximately €300 million in funds and tokenized securities assets on-chain. This combination means the platform is embedded with a strict regulatory framework from the outset, rather than being an afterthought compliance patch. The project has already opened registration for the whitelist, giving global investors the opportunity to participate in this experiment.

On the technical front, DUSK employs cryptographic solutions such as zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption to protect transaction privacy while maintaining on-chain auditability. This balance remains relatively rare among existing blockchain solutions. Privacy and transparency are often viewed as opposing ends; DUSK's attempt is to find an operational middle ground between the two.

Overall, the project's logical chain is quite clear: starting from underlying privacy technologies, moving to an EVM-compatible mainnet, and then to real asset on-chain applications—each step aims to address practical pain points in blockchain applications. Whether it can ultimately translate into commercial value depends on execution and market response.