In 2026, Dusk's collaboration with the Dutch regulated exchange NPEX will reach a significant milestone— the official launch of DuskTrade. What is this? Simply put, it is about bringing traditional financial assets onto the blockchain.

NPEX is no ordinary entity. It holds full licenses for MTF (Multilateral Trading Facility), brokerage, and European crowdfunding services, and is directly regulated by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). Its background is impressive: it has facilitated over 200 million euros in financing for SMEs and connects more than 17,500 active investors.

The core operation of DuskTrade? Moving over 300 million euros worth of tokenized securities onto the chain—including stocks, bonds, fund shares, and other traditional products. It sounds simple, but the underlying technology is complex. It uses Dusk Layer 1's native privacy solution (zero-knowledge proofs combined with homomorphic encryption), meaning your transaction details are completely confidential, yet regulators can verify them when needed, fully compliant with EU regulations like MiCA and MiFID II.

What sets this apart from other tokenization projects? DuskTrade is a complete on-chain clearing system—from asset issuance and trading to final settlement—all conducted on the blockchain. In the traditional model, this process involves a bunch of intermediaries; now, it’s streamlined, reducing costs and increasing liquidity.

From another perspective, this marks the breaking down of the wall between traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi). It’s not just theoretically feasible but has a real, regulated, and operational system with actual funds involved. Institutions no longer need to just watch from the sidelines.