Over the years, the traditional financial sector's attitude towards blockchain has indeed been quietly changing. From initial hesitation and maintaining distance to now gradually testing the waters, every step has been taken with extreme caution. The reasons are not hard to understand—regulatory policies, technological security, and user trust—any bottleneck in these areas could cause trouble.

Recently, I came across an interesting case of cooperation—NPEX, an institution regulated by the Dutch Financial Supervisory Authority, surprisingly chose to collaborate deeply with DUSK. This is worth pondering.

NPEX is not a small project; it manages over €200 million in equity and bond investments for small and medium-sized enterprises. What does it mean to hold an MTF (Multilateral Trading Facility) license in the European financial system? It indicates the qualification to directly provide formal securities trading services. An institution of this scale partnering with a public blockchain must have undergone rigorous review and risk assessment.

But here’s an interesting point—DUSK is not particularly eye-catching in terms of data. It has only 19,000 daily active addresses and less than $1 million in total locked assets on-chain, which is almost insignificant in the L1 track. Yet NPEX still chooses to cooperate with it. The real reason is quite simple: that set of compliance and privacy solutions.

It’s important to clarify a common misconception here. What does privacy mean to retail investors? It’s anonymity—preferably no one can see transaction records. But the privacy that institutions need is entirely different—confidentiality from competitors, but transparency to regulators. It sounds contradictory, but this is indeed the genuine requirement of traditional financial institutions.