If you look at the Dusk Foundation as an ordinary public blockchain, it's easy to feel that it's not lively enough. It’s not like those projects that talk about ecological prosperity every day; it feels more like a team that has been tackling difficult engineering problems. However, the more I look at it, the more I feel that its choices are quite clear-headed. What it aims to do is not to attract everyone to play, but to ensure that regulated assets can truly operate on the chain, and after they are operational, they must withstand scrutiny, protect privacy, enable cross-chain settlement, and provide decent market data. Each of these requirements is not easy on its own, and when combined, it is basically a high difficulty level.
Let me start with a very straightforward point. Many people talk about on-chain finance, focusing on issuance, thinking that transforming equity and bonds into tokens is enough to complete the task. But in reality, the hardest part is not putting assets on the chain, but creating a complete set of processes that are needed for assets to operate long-term on the chain. Whoever can solve the processes will be able to serve institutions. The processes include identity and qualification verification, information disclosure and auditing, order and position privacy, settlement and clearing, cross-network circulation, and data standards that can be accepted by regulators and institutions. The actions of the Dusk Foundation over the past two years have basically focused on addressing this checklist.
One recent event that reflects its direction is that it collaborated with NPEX to adopt Chainlink's interoperability and data components, including CCIP, Data Streams, and DataLink. This combination is very clear; it doesn't just want to talk about cooperation, but aims to create an end-to-end production-grade link for compliant asset issuance, cross-chain settlement, and high-frequency market data release. For average users, this sounds a bit technical, but it is crucial for institutions. Because institutions are not here to experiment; what they want are standard processes that are repeatable, auditable, and scalable.
I prefer to break down the most important changes here into three points and explain in simpler terms what it is really doing.
The first thing is to see cross-chain settlement as a necessity rather than an optional topic. Once many assets involve different networks, whether for collateral, lending, or trading, they will encounter settlement issues. Clearing and settlement are core infrastructures in traditional finance, and the same applies on-chain. You either have to piece together a bunch of independent bridges or use a more standardized interoperability layer to turn it into a universal capability. The Dusk Foundation's incorporation of standards like CCIP essentially aims to reduce the cost of reinventing the wheel every time a cross-chain occurs, allowing assets to circulate under control in a larger decentralized environment. The term 'controlled' is very important because it determines whether regulators and institutions will nod in approval.
The second thing is to turn market data from optional to a central line of the project. Many on-chain applications use oracles, but institutional-grade assets have stricter requirements for data. They need not only accuracy but also clear data sources, update frequency, anomaly handling, and responsibility boundaries. Capabilities like Data Streams, which provide low-latency data updates, are more like foundational components in the securities asset scenario. Without them, it is very difficult to create a trading experience close to the real market, and it is also challenging to implement serious risk control. The Dusk Foundation pulling data components to the forefront at this point indicates that it is moving toward production environments rather than remaining in the demonstration layer.
The third thing is that compliance and privacy must be done together, and it should be developed into a systematic capability. When people mention privacy, they often think of resisting regulation, but in institutional scenarios, privacy is not about hiding from anyone; it is about protecting sensitive information. For example, investor identity, transaction details, buying and selling directions, and position structures—if everything is transparent across the network, institutions and large funds cannot operate at all. However, if you make privacy a black box, then regulation and auditing cannot pass. The approach of the Dusk Foundation is more like achieving both auditability and non-intrusiveness. The compliance conditions that need to be verified are verified, and the records that need to be audited can be audited, but not everyone's privacy is exposed in public. Achieving this balance well will allow institutions to dare to engage in real trading and settlement on the chain.
At this point, let's shift our focus back to the DUSK token itself. Because you will find that every action taken by the Dusk Foundation recently is aimed at increasing the accessibility and usability of DUSK tokens, rather than just relying on narratives to pull valuations.
For instance, on the exchange entry point, in October 2025, DUSK went live on Binance US, which is one of its first real mainstream entry points into the U.S. market. For ordinary people, this means better buying and selling, while for the project, it feels like expanding a liquidity channel. Don't underestimate this channel; institutions and market makers have very realistic requirements for entry points. The more compliant, stable, and predictable the entry, the lower the participation threshold. For a network that focuses on regulated assets, such entry can significantly lower the psychological costs for many potential partners.
For example, the bi-directional bridge. In May 2025, Dusk launched a bi-directional bridge between the mainnet and BSC, charging 1 DUSK as a fee, while connecting the mainnet's native DUSK and the token forms of external networks. For users, this is convenient; for the ecosystem, this is a connection of liquidity and toolchains. Because many ready-made trading tools, wallet supports, liquidity pools, and even user habits are on other networks. If you don't connect them, users will have to go back and forth, and developers will have to make many extra adaptations. After connecting, the DUSK token will be easier to use in different environments, rather than just being held.
Then there is the more immediate market data. In mid-January 2026, DUSK showed significant volatility and heat in the market, with some statistical measures indicating large daily gains, and some analyses categorizing it as one of the leaders in the rotation of privacy sectors. Different platforms will have different gain figures, but several consensus points are quite clear. First, trading volume was significantly amplified in a short time. Second, market capitalization remains in a relatively small range. Third, the resurgence of attention has brought DUSK back into the view of more people. Here, I do not want to discuss predictions, because they can easily turn into sentiment. More importantly, after the heat comes, can the Dusk Foundation leverage real implementations to capture this wave of attention.
To capture attention, I think we need to look at three types of indicators, and these three types of indicators are particularly directly related to the value capture of DUSK tokens.
The first category is the real activity volume of compliant assets on-chain. It is not about announcing partnerships or issuing notices; it is about seeing whether operations related to issuance, trading, and settlement are continuously occurring on-chain. For example, whether the number of settlement transactions per week is steadily increasing, whether the number of active addresses for compliant applications is rising, and whether contract calls related to regulated assets are becoming more frequent. As long as this part picks up, the demand for DUSK tokens as transaction fees and network resources will naturally increase.
The second category is the utilization intensity of cross-chain and bridging. Whether the bi-directional bridge is being frequently used, and whether cross-chain settlements are happening in real business. The 1 DUSK fee charged by the bridge may not seem much, but if the bridging frequency increases, it will turn into a continuous use-based demand, while also distributing the liquidity of DUSK more evenly across different ecosystems. A broader liquidity distribution leads to more effective price discovery and makes institutional participation more comfortable.
The third category is the structural changes in network security and staking participation. The long-term supply and incentive design of DUSK tokens means they place great importance on staking security. Increased staking participation will reduce circulation speed and decrease short-term selling pressure, making institutions more at ease leaving value on the chain. More importantly, once the scale of compliant assets rises, network security becomes a hard requirement, not just an added bonus.
I also need to discuss risks and be straightforward about them. The Dusk Foundation has chosen a challenging path, and the risks of this challenging path mainly lie not in the concept but in the pace of delivery. Institutions do not lack pilot projects; what they lack is stable operation. If one module is delayed, the entire chain cannot function. Another risk is external competition. The RWA track is very crowded; everyone is talking about institutions, but in the end, it still comes down to who can truly access business data and who can handle the contradictions between compliance and privacy more smoothly.
My personal conclusion is this. The recent pace of the Dusk Foundation is more like paving a road that institutions can take. Interoperability and data standards, exchange entry points, and bi-directional bridges may seem less flashy than various gimmicks, but they are closer to the underlying infrastructure needed for real adoption. If you can see more on-chain activity data related to regulated market infrastructures like NPEX continuously increasing, and see cross-chain settlements and high-frequency data releases being repeatedly used in real business, then the demand for DUSK tokens will shift from being sentiment-based to being use-based. At that time, its valuation logic will be more like infrastructure rather than a fleeting trend.
