This question has been circling in my mind for a long time.

Bitcoin and Ethereum have completely opened up the ledger, allowing anyone to scrutinize every transaction. Decentralization advocates say this is revolutionary. But imagine: you represent an institution and want to issue securities worth tens of millions of euros on the chain. Do you really want all your competitors to clearly see who your counterparties are, how the negotiations went, and when you made your move? Such transparency is essentially surrendering in terms of business strategy.

In 2018, when Emanuele Francioni founded Dusk, he posed an almost impossible challenge: regulated financial activities must be on-chain, but commercial secrets also need protection. It’s like dancing on the edge of a knife. Looking at the entire industry, most projects choose either complete anonymity—which naturally invites regulatory crackdowns—or full transparency—which results in losing all competitive advantage. Dusk chose a third way: programmable privacy. It sounds like technical jargon, but essentially it’s a redefinition of privacy.

Their technical architecture is quite interesting, centered around PLONK zero-knowledge proofs. This technology itself isn’t their original invention; the key is in their application approach. They built a dual-track transaction model to balance privacy and transparency. This approach is worth paying attention to—it can meet regulatory requirements while protecting genuine business information.