Right now, blockchains are trying to do something they were never originally designed for. They are being asked to handle real finance. Not experiments. Not small test transfers. Real assets, real companies, real people, and real rules.
The problem is simple to explain. Public blockchains show everything. Who sent money. Who received it. How much. When. Even patterns around those actions. This openness helped crypto grow early on, because anyone could verify what was happening. But the same openness becomes a problem the moment regulated finance enters the system. In real life, financial systems do not work like a glass box.
If you send money from your bank account, the whole world does not see it. Your neighbor cannot track your salary. Competitors cannot monitor your company’s payments. Yet regulators can still audit transactions when needed. That balance already exists in traditional finance. On most blockchains, it does not.
To work around this, many crypto projects add privacy later. They build a public system first, then attach privacy tools on top. Maybe a private pool. Maybe optional shielding. Maybe a separate privacy feature for advanced users. On paper, this sounds fine. In practice, it breaks down quickly. Once transaction data is public, hiding parts of it later does not undo the exposure. Even if amounts are hidden, behavior is not. Anyone watching the chain can still guess what is happening.
This is why privacy cannot be an extra feature. It has to be part of the base system.
This is the idea behind Dusk Network as described in its documentation. Dusk does not treat privacy as something special or optional. It treats privacy as normal. Transactions can be private by default, while still following rules and checks that regulated finance requires.
To understand how this helps, imagine a simple example. A company wants to issue shares on-chain. In the real world, not everyone is allowed to buy those shares. Some people must be verified. Some transfers are restricted. Some information must stay confidential. On most blockchains, enforcing these rules means exposing user data or building complex workarounds. On Dusk, the system is designed so rules can be enforced without showing private details to everyone.
Dusk uses cryptography that allows someone to prove something is valid without showing the underlying information. In very simple terms, it can prove that rules were followed without revealing sensitive data. A transaction can be correct, allowed, and settled, while keeping amounts and identities private. If a regulator needs to check something, the system allows selective disclosure instead of full exposure.
This matters because finance is not just about moving value. It is about responsibility. Who is allowed to do what. Under which conditions. At what time. If a blockchain cannot answer those questions clearly, it cannot support real financial activity, no matter how fast or decentralized it is.
Of course, there are downsides. Privacy systems are harder to build and harder to audit. Bugs are more dangerous when logic is hidden behind cryptography. Developers need to be more careful. Users need to trust that the system was designed correctly. Dusk’s documentation is open about this complexity. Privacy does not remove risk. It changes where the risk lives.
There is also a social challenge. Many people in crypto believe full transparency is always good. Others fear that privacy automatically means hiding bad behavior. Both views miss the point. Privacy in finance is not about secrecy. It is about control. The right people see the right information at the right time.
Why does this matter now? Because crypto is growing up. Institutions are watching. Laws already exist. Real assets are being discussed seriously. If blockchains continue to expose everything by default, regulated finance will either stay away or force heavy restrictions on top. Systems that are built with privacy from the start have a better chance of fitting into the real world without breaking what makes blockchains useful.
Privacy by design is not a luxury. For regulated finance, it is basic infrastructure.