Dusk Network's Phoenix v1.4 mainnet upgrade has gone far beyond just the technical level—on-chain data speaks for itself. After the upgrade completion, the network's average daily privacy transaction volume has stabilized at over 30,000 transactions, representing growth of over 120% compared to pre-upgrade levels. What's interesting behind this growth is that institutional-grade players have quietly entered the field: among the newly added addresses, accounts flagged as "compliance institutional testing" have transaction frequency 8 times higher than regular retail users, and individual transaction amounts are two orders of magnitude larger.

From an economic model perspective, this upgrade has created an interesting contrast. While the gas cost per privacy transaction did decrease by approximately 35% due to optimization, this hasn't reduced network revenue—it has actually increased it. Why? Because total transaction volume exploded, combined with increased calls for complex financial contracts like RWA issuance, resulting in the entire network's monthly fee income (in US dollars) growing 95% month-over-month. This directly drove the token's deflation mechanism: a portion of fee income is used for buybacks and burning. Currently, total staking has accumulated to 450 million tokens, with annualized returns stable at 7.2%, attracting conservative capital seeking stable cash flows.

Simply put, this upgrade is the watershed moment from "usable" to "user-friendly." It has laid the groundwork for subsequent more complex compliant financial applications. The project token is essentially the "energy" and "equity certificate" within the network—its value is transitioning from paper expectations to tangible usage growth and revenue generation.