Back in 2018, when the ICO bubble had just burst, the entire community was asking: what exactly can blockchain do?

The Dusk team at that time saw something others didn't—if blockchain is really to be used in finance, privacy is an unavoidable hurdle. Enterprises and institutions can't just openly share their ledgers. The problem was, zero-knowledge proofs were still only in academia back then, and engineering complexity was ridiculously high.

Other projects took shortcuts, just forked existing code and changed some parameters. Dusk was different, choosing to take the hardest path—building everything from the ground up. A new consensus mechanism, a new virtual machine, a new privacy protocol—nothing could be compromised. At that time, some questioned whether it was worth it, given the high technical risks and long cycle.

But looking back, it all makes sense. It was precisely because of this uncompromising approach that Dusk truly established a technological barrier that others couldn't copy.

From 2021 to 2023, during the industry's most疯狂 period, various Layer1 projects sprouted like mushrooms, all racing to improve speed and ecosystem. Dusk, on the other hand, remained low-key, focusing entirely on iterative improvements of its underlying technology. During this period, the completion of the Phoenix privacy model marked a significant milestone. When reviewing the one-year anniversary of the DuskDS mainnet launch on January 7, counting from its founding in 2018, this has been an 8-year story. In the crypto industry, 8 years is equivalent to several eras; many star projects from back then have faded away. But Dusk is still here, and is just entering the prelude to its breakout.