The on-chain of real-world assets has long moved beyond the phase of just talking big.

The most straightforward example is Dusk. This chain has been working diligently since 2018, not riding the hype or shouting slogans every day, but focusing on three core aspects: technology, compliance, and real-world implementation. Honestly, projects like this are rare.

On the technical side, DuskEVM is about to launch in the second week of January. Developers will probably be excited about this—why? Because it’s fully compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem, so those who have written Solidity don’t need to relearn a new language; they can migrate their contracts directly. There’s no need for complicated adjustments. But the real strength lies in privacy and performance—Piecrust VM has been specially optimized for zero-knowledge proofs, significantly speeding up ZK proof generation. This isn’t just talk; it’s a tangible performance boost. There’s also something called Hedger, which combines homomorphic encryption and ZK technology, enabling truly end-to-end encrypted transactions while still providing verifiable proofs during audits. In other words, the details are tightly secured, but when transparency is needed, they have the confidence to reveal data—this all demonstrates solid engineering capabilities.

On the business side, it gets even more interesting. Dusk has partnered with the Dutch licensed exchange NPEX to launch DuskTrade, aiming to bring securities worth hundreds of millions of euros onto the chain—from issuance and trading to automatic dividends, creating a closed-loop process. This isn’t just a demo project; it’s genuinely connected with real custodial institutions, which shows real strength.