I remember the first time I heard about @Dusk , I kind of shrugged. Another layer 1 talking about privacy and institutions — I’ve heard that combo enough times to be skeptical by default. Privacy chains usually lean cypherpunk. Institutional chains usually lean… boring. Dusk sat awkwardly in the middle, and that’s what made me keep an eye on it.

What I noticed over time is that Dusk isn’t obsessed with being loud. No constant narrative flipping. No trendy pivot every cycle. They’ve been stubbornly focused on one idea: financial privacy that regulators won’t immediately freak out about. That’s harder than it sounds.

At first, I wasn’t sure the zero-knowledge angle really mattered beyond buzzwords. ZK gets thrown around a lot. But watching Dusk frame it less as “hide everything” and more as “selective privacy with auditability” slowly clicked for me. It’s not about disappearing. It’s about proving things without oversharing, which actually makes sense if you’re dealing with real assets or institutions that can’t just go full anon.

One thing that still bothers me is adoption speed. This is not a fast narrative. Regulated DeFi moves slowly, and $DUSK ’s value depends heavily on builders and institutions actually showing up.

Still, after watching this space for years, projects that know exactly who they’re for tend to survive longer than the loud ones chasing everyone. #Dusk feels like that kind of bet.