The cyclical nature of the crypto market can be quite brutal. The Dusk (DUSK) project has experienced this firsthand—rising to $1.09 during the 2021 bull market, only to decline afterward. Currently, the price hovers around $0.04, with a market cap dropping to a few tens of millions of dollars. In the short term, this is a small-cap project that has undergone a heavy setback. But interestingly, market pricing often lags behind fundamentals. When Dusk's mainnet launches in 2025-2026 and major partnerships come to light, we need to ask a new question: what exactly is the project's approach to ecosystem development? And how much is its differentiated advantage in this market worth?

First, let's talk about the ecosystem strategy. Many public chains simply throw a large sum of money into the ecosystem, supporting whoever comes along, resulting in an ecosystem that has everything but lacks specialization. Dusk's foundation took a different approach—they precisely allocated 15 million DUSK tokens into three areas: privacy DeFi, compliant asset tools, and zero-knowledge proof applications. It sounds simple, but in reality, it's like bleeding on the edge.

Why is this smarter? First, all resources revolve around a single core—financial privacy and compliance—so the brand identity remains focused. Second, the foundation collaborates with other projects (like Harmony) to optimize ZK toolkits such as PLONK, making it easier for developers to get started without needing to be cryptography experts. This effectively lowers the barrier to entry for innovation while ensuring that every project within the ecosystem is a high-quality, vertical application.

Rather than spending wildly to attract attention, it's better to concentrate efforts on excelling in a specific niche. Dusk has clearly chosen the latter.