At the beginning of 2026, there always seems to be a new atmosphere in the cryptocurrency world, but I have spent more time circling around Dusk, this old privacy chain. Starting from 2018, it doesn't chase trends but focuses on refining ZK technology. After the second week of the mainnet DuskEVM going live, the community responded enthusiastically. I bridged some assets over and tried to deploy a small privacy DeFi contract: the Solidity code is directly compatible, executing on that ZK-driven L1, with a speed as steady as running locally. The data is wrapped in default encryption, and the audit path is clear. This calm and steady approach made me unable to resist testing a few more extreme scenarios.
DuskTrade has made me ponder for a while. Deep cooperation with the Netherlands NPEX, the platform carries MTF, broker, and ECSP licenses, directly targeting over 30 billion euros of security tokenization on the blockchain. The waitlist opened in January, and I squeezed in early, imagining traditional stocks and bonds being segmented and circulated on the chain, with privacy enabled by default, audits switched with one click, old assets transforming from dormant warehouses to active pools, with liquidity overflowing, and institutional old money gradually seeping in—doesn’t this bring RWA from a concept to a real business? The roadmap indicates that DuskTrade will officially land in 2026, Hedger will continue to iterate, and the ecosystem is expected to shift from technological stacking to application explosion.
$DUSK price has been swinging a lot since the beginning of the year, and when the privacy narrative heats up, it pulls. I haven’t rushed to heavily invest, but have been observing with a small position, not betting on rotation and speculation, but believing that Dusk's style of 'quiet guardianship' has real endurance in institutional-level scenarios. Privacy is not compromised during cross-border settlements, audits do not hinder efficiency during RWA custody, and even in the future, AI agents managing payments on the chain might find it to balance privacy needs. Perhaps some people think privacy chains are narrow, but I think narrow is specialized: not greedy for size, but focused on the pain points of compliant finance, able to leverage real money when landing.
