Staking on the DUSK chain is somewhat unique. The total locked DUSK remains stable at 120 million tokens, accounting for 12% of the total supply of 1 billion. The annualized yield stays within the 3-4% range—honestly, this level of return is even lower than many European government bonds.

What’s more surprising is the participation threshold for staking. Ordinary users who stake DUSK cannot directly upgrade to validators. Currently, there are only 17 active validator nodes operating on the network, each of which must pass KYC checks and are all compliant entities. This is almost unheard of in the Web3 space—everyone is desperately trying to boost APY to attract liquidity, while DUSK seems to be tying itself down.

But things get interesting when looking at the data. Over 60% of wallets in the staking addresses hold more than 100,000 DUSK in a single position. The average lock-up period for these users exceeds 200 days, far longer than typical liquidity mining participants. Clearly, these users aren’t in it just for the returns—they are using real money to vote with their investments and support this system.

From the start, DUSK’s staking has not been just a simple financial game; it has evolved into a form of trust assertion. It doesn’t aim to please the market; instead, it actively keeps out short-term arbitrage capital, aiming to attract long-term participants who truly believe in the concept of “compliance and programmability.”

The low yield actually acts as a gatekeeper. In an ecosystem full of liquidity hunters, DUSK maintains the quality of its user base with modest returns—this counterintuitive approach might be the secret to its ability to weather market cycles.