Dusk has been doing one thing since 2018—finding the line between privacy and transparency.

Many people misunderstand. The project is not about hiding in the dark, nor is it about exposing everything. The key is what should be seen and what should not. Imagine the financial markets: if everyone knows your strategy, innovation dies; but if operations are completely black-boxed, trust is lost. Balance is the way to go.

**The True Meaning of Privacy Protection**

Dusk aims to protect intent, not secrets. Allow market participants to trade freely and develop strategies while complying with regulatory requirements—these two are not mutually exclusive. Just like KYC processes, institutions can selectively disclose information to complete compliance verification, rather than making all transaction details public.

This logic is especially suitable for regulated financial and real-world asset on-chain scenarios(RWA). These markets inherently rely on rules, and Dusk simply makes privacy and compliance the default setting.

**The Two Pillars of the Technical Foundation**

At the core are two self-developed products. One is Piecrust, a zero-knowledge proof virtual machine, and the other is Citadel, a compliance tool. They support confidential securities contracts(XSC)—meaning transaction data is encrypted and protected while meeting regulatory frameworks like EU MiFID II, MiCA, and others.

Many privacy chains have faced this problem: either privacy is excellent but non-compliant, or compliance is achieved at the expense of privacy. Dusk attempts to do both.

**Native Confidential Smart Contracts**

What’s even more impressive is that Dusk is among the first public chains to support native confidential smart contracts. This is not an afterthought patch; it’s built into the architecture from the ground up. This makes issuing privacy assets and building privacy financial applications straightforward.

In simple terms, if you want to issue regulated privacy securities on-chain or tokenize assets in a compliant manner, Dusk’s combination is worth a look. Privacy + compliance, dual engines driving the project, this positioning is indeed somewhat rare in today’s landscape.