Dusk's ZK technology is not just a plaything; it specifically targets the pain points of institutional finance: keeping transaction privacy tightly secured while allowing for audits whenever needed, perfectly achieving a "both/and" scenario.
The core proof uses PLONK zk-SNARKs, with Dusk modified to the PlonKup version, adding efficient lookup and recursive support, resulting in small proofs, fast verification, and basic generation in seconds.
Transactions use the Phoenix model: similar to UTXO, it fully conceals the sender, receiver, and amount, relying solely on ZK proofs to ensure everything is legitimate, and it also supports selective disclosure to auditors.
In the smart contract portion, it runs on either Piecrust VM or DuskEVM, with all inputs and outputs kept confidential, only outputting a proof that states "correct and compliant." The Hedger tool directly allows Solidity contracts to be privatized, utilizing homomorphic encryption and ZK in a mixed manner, extremely practical.
Identity utilizes Citadel: ZK for KYC, proving compliance once, but never revealing the original data, maximizing sovereign privacy.
In simple terms, this ZK system is not just a pure anonymity toy, but an industrial-grade balanced solution. Generating proofs consumes some computational power, but for institutions, it's a significant saving compared to exposing raw data. By 2026, with DuskEVM fully operational, the realization of RWA is expected to rely on it.