Dusk: Tokenization Isn’t the Hard Part Settlement Is
Most conversations about tokenization stop at issuance, as if creating a digital representation of an asset is the breakthrough, when in reality issuance is table stakes and settlement is where systems either hold up or fail. Settlement is where legal ownership changes, obligations are finalized, and disputes become possible, which is why traditional markets obsess over finality, fee predictability, and execution guarantees. Dusk is built around that pressure point rather than around user-facing excitement, treating the chain as financial plumbing instead of an app platform. Its design choices start to make more sense when viewed through this lens: low and stable fees are not about retail affordability but about enabling repeatable institutional workflows, fast closure is not about speed for its own sake but about reducing counterparty risk, and privacy paired with auditability exists because regulated settlement cannot be fully transparent or fully opaque. The modular architecture matters here because settlement rails cannot afford abrupt change; they must evolve without breaking legal and operational continuity. If tokenized assets actually scale beyond pilots and press releases, the dominant chains will likely look less like innovation showcases and more like quiet infrastructure, and the real bet becomes whether markets reward the fastest story or the systems that can settle value reliably under real-world constraints.
