In the second week of January 2026, an interesting event occurred—Dusk's EVM mainnet officially launched. This is not just a simple version update, but a key step for the team that has been working on compliant privacy blockchains since 2018 towards institutional-grade applications.

Speaking of Dusk, its core competitiveness is clear: through zero-knowledge proofs and isomorphic encryption, it protects transaction privacy while allowing regulators to audit. This may sound contradictory, but this solution to the contradiction has attracted institutional users.

The most practical aspect of DuskEVM is this—developers can directly write smart contracts in Solidity, deploy without changing code, and automatically gain underlying privacy protection. This efficiency advantage is very real for Web3 developers.

There is also a component called Hedger, which implements private transactions in the EVM environment. User balances and transfer details are hidden by default, but regulatory agencies can audit after authorization. In other words, institutions can go on-chain while protecting commercial privacy and meeting regulatory requirements—this is exactly where the industry is currently stuck.

In the days since the mainnet went live, the response has been quick—several DeFi protocols and RWA projects have already announced migrations, with gas consumption and contract deployment volume continuously increasing, indicating that there is indeed market demand. This also greatly lowers the technical barriers for institutions to enter.

Next, DuskTrade will be launched, in cooperation with the Dutch licensed exchange NPEX, planning to bring over €300 million worth of securities tokenized on-chain. This scale is no small feat. $DUSK, as the native token, handles gas payments, staking, and governance functions. The higher the activity on the mainnet, the greater the token demand.

It now seems that for those wanting to participate in this track, this is indeed a good window.