The January 7, 2026, activation of the Dusk Mainnet wasn't just a calendar event; it was the birth of a new standard for Layer-1 blockchains. At the heart of this success is DuskEVM, a breakthrough that brings Ethereum Virtual Machine compatibility to a privacy-preserving environment.
For years, developers had to choose between the massive ecosystem of Solidity (Ethereum) or the privacy of specialized chains. Dusk has removed that barrier. By using the Piecrust VM, which is optimized specifically for ZK-computations, Dusk allows developers to deploy standard smart contracts that settle with native privacy by default.
Furthermore, the Segregated Byzantine Agreement (SBA) consensus mechanism ensures near-instant finality. In regulated finance, you cannot wait 10 minutes for a "probabilistic" settlement. You need to know a trade is final the second it is executed. With its 2026 upgrades, Dusk has proven that a public, permissionless chain can meet the rigorous demands of the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) and other global regulators.