Whenever people talk about @Dusk SBA consensus, a few phrases always appear.
Deterministic finality, censorship resistance, and the privacy lottery.
These features are real strengths and they are exactly why institutions take Dusk seriously.
But if we step back for a moment, another question appears.
š How expensive is this model, and who pays the cost?
Great for institutions but challenging for nodes š§
From a financial perspective, SBA looks like a solution built specifically for high value systems.
Institutions do not tolerate probabilistic rollbacks and they do not gamble on settlement.
SBA delivers that certainty but achieving it is not cheap.
VRF based selection, hidden validator identities, and zero knowledge participation in consensus
all together raise the operational load for nodes.
It increases everything.
Computing power, memory, bandwidth, electricity.
Naturally this leads to one outcome.
Not everyone can run a node easily.
This is not a flaw or a conspiracy. It is simply the direction any high security and high assurance system moves in.
Nodes do not disappear, but the distribution changes.
There are still many participants.
The highest weight validators become more centralized.
Staking leans toward bigger operators.
This is not unique to Dusk. It is a normal side effect of designing consensus for regulated finance.
It is like giving the system a bulletproof vest.
But the vest is heavy and only a few can carry it comfortably.
A tighter form of decentralization. Is it worth it?
Here is the real tension.
Dusk aims to support institutional finance.
Institutions demand strict determinism, privacy, and compliance.
These requirements naturally add weight to the system.
So we see a clear trade off.
Dusk gives up some level of broad node accessibility in exchange for absolute certainty at the transaction level.
Does this break decentralization?
Not exactly.
It simply prioritizes decentralization differently.
SBA is not a one size fits all solution. It is a strategic phase ā³
If you look at Dusk as a chain meant for every retail user, SBA may appear too heavy.
But if you place it inside the world of RWAs, securities, and institutional settlement, SBA becomes a required entry ticket šļø.
Without it, institutions do not even consider using the chain.
With it, Dusk can operate at the scale where financial systems actually need certainty.
