For years, blockchain has promised to modernize financial markets. Faster settlement, fewer intermediaries, lower costs. On paper, it sounds obvious. Yet despite all the experimentation, traditional securities settlement has not moved onto public blockchains in any meaningful way. This isn’t because institutions are slow or resistant to change. It’s because public ledgers, by design, clash with how securities markets actually function.
This is exactly the gap Dusk Network was built to address.
To understand why, you first need to understand how securities settlement works in the real world, not how crypto imagines it should work.
Settlement is about finality, not visibility
In equity and bond markets, settlement is the moment when ownership legally changes hands. Cash moves, securities are delivered, obligations are closed, and risk is removed from balance sheets. This process handles trillions of dollars in value every single day across global markets.
What matters most in settlement is not transparency. It’s finality, accuracy, and legal enforceability.
Public blockchains emphasize visibility. Every transfer is observable. Every balance can be tracked. While this works for speculative trading, it creates problems the moment assets represent regulated securities.
Settlement systems are trusted precisely because they are discreet. Ownership registries are not public websites. Transfer instructions are not broadcast in real time. Market participants rely on controlled access, not global observability.
Public ledgers invert this model.
Why public visibility becomes a risk
Securities markets operate under strict confidentiality rules. Shareholder lists, trade sizes, counterparties, and settlement flows are sensitive information. Exposing them publicly creates multiple risks.
If ownership data is public, companies violate confidentiality obligations. If trade flows are visible, strategies leak. If settlement activity can be tracked, counterparties can be identified and exploited.
These aren’t hypothetical concerns. They are reasons institutions avoid public ledgers entirely for post-trade infrastructure.
Public blockchains assume that transparency equals trust. In regulated markets, transparency at the wrong level destroys trust.
Settlement involves more than transfers
Another misconception is that settlement is just about moving tokens from one address to another. In reality, securities settlement is deeply tied to compliance.
Every settlement event must align with:
• Know-your-customer and counterparty rules
• Reporting and audit requirements
• Legal ownership records
• Jurisdiction-specific regulations
On public ledgers, this logic sits outside the chain. Data is exported. Reports are generated manually. Compliance becomes a patchwork layered on top of infrastructure that was never designed for it.
This fragmentation increases cost, complexity, and legal uncertainty.
Why retrofitting public chains doesn’t work
Many projects attempt to solve this by adding privacy layers, permissioned environments, or side systems to public blockchains. While these approaches help at the margins, they rarely solve the core issue.
If the base layer exposes all state by default, privacy becomes an exception rather than the rule. Over time, systems become fragile, fragmented, and hard to govern.
Settlement infrastructure cannot afford that fragility. When trillions are at stake, the system must behave predictably under stress.
How Dusk approaches settlement differently
Dusk starts from the assumption that securities settlement must be private, auditable, and enforceable at the same time.
Instead of broadcasting every detail publicly, Dusk allows settlement to occur with controlled visibility. Ownership can change without being publicly exposed. Transactions can remain confidential while still being provable. Auditors and regulators can access what they need without the market seeing everything.
This mirrors how settlement already works today, while bringing it on-chain.
By designing privacy and compliance into the infrastructure itself, Dusk removes the need for constant off-chain reconciliation and workarounds.
Why this matters for capital efficiency
Traditional settlement delays lock up capital. When trades take one or two days to finalize, institutions must hold buffers to manage counterparty risk. This ties up enormous amounts of money that could otherwise be deployed.
On-chain settlement promises to reduce this friction, but only if it can meet regulatory requirements. Public ledgers fail here because they trade discretion for speed.
Dusk aims to deliver both.
Faster settlement with legal finality, without exposing sensitive data, improves capital efficiency without introducing new risks.
The real barrier isn’t technology, it’s alignment
The biggest obstacle to moving securities settlement on-chain isn’t performance. It’s alignment with how markets are structured.
Public ledgers were designed for open participation and radical transparency. Securities markets are designed for controlled participation and structured disclosure.
Dusk aligns with the latter.
By respecting confidentiality, auditability, and enforceability from the start, it creates an environment where settlement can move on-chain without breaking the rules that markets depend on.
My take
Traditional securities settlement hasn’t avoided public blockchains by accident. It has avoided them because they expose too much, too broadly, and too permanently.
Dusk recognizes that settlement doesn’t need more visibility. It needs better structure.
By building infrastructure that mirrors how regulated markets actually operate, Dusk doesn’t try to force securities onto public ledgers. It builds a ledger that securities can realistically use.
That difference is subtle, but it’s exactly why it matters.
