To put it more straightforwardly, in the world of regulated assets, the heaviest lifting is not in matching trades, but in what happens after the transaction. How does clearing proceed? How is settlement completed? How are positions recorded? How are anomalies handled? How is regulation reported? How is auditing replicated? How are corporate actions executed? Many chains may seem smooth at the moment of 'transaction occurrence', but if you pull the timeline back three days, a week, or a quarter, you'll find that they cannot operate within a compliance framework. If Dusk only makes transactions more private, it will still hit this wall. If it truly wants to create an on-chain securities market, it must systematize the processes that occur after the transaction.
The reason I suddenly focus on the post-trade aspect is that I recently saw obvious signals from Dusk on two lines: one is that the product path of DuskTrade increasingly resembles a regulated entry point, and the other is its actions in interoperability and standard layers seem to be paving the way for a 'real market structure' rather than chasing hotspots. I can certainly see the activities and content dissemination, but what really makes me reassess is that it increasingly looks like it is filling in the framework for 'post-trade operation,' rather than just filling in the surface of 'trading occurring.'
I will break down the issues Dusk must solve into six parts using a 'post-trade' logic. Each part is closely related to the project, and each can directly correspond to whether this route for Dusk is worth a long-term focus.
The first part is that accounts and identities are not one-time gates, but ongoing state management.
One point that is most easily misunderstood by the crypto community regarding regulated assets is that everyone thinks KYC is complete once done. But in the real world, identity and qualification are a continuous state, not a one-time pass. Being compliant today does not mean being compliant next month. Changes in regional policies, changes in entity nature, changes in risk levels, changes in sanction lists—these will all affect whether a person can continue to participate in trading or holding certain assets.
If I treat DuskTrade as a true regulated entry point, I will be very concerned about whether it has made onboarding a sustainable identity state rather than a one-time pass. Because many post-trade actions depend on identity status, such as whether one can participate in a certain offering, whether one can make a redemption, and whether one can make compliant choices when a corporate action occurs. If identity is just a line in an off-chain database, it becomes very difficult to explain when disputes arise post-trade. You will get stuck on the question of 'did he qualify at that time,' and then start relying on manual retrospection and team explanations. Regulated assets do not accept such chains of explanation; they require reproducibility.
What Dusk's route should truly achieve is to turn 'qualification results' into an on-chain verifiable state, and to be able to prove what the state was based on when needed. Note that I deliberately use the term 'qualification results' because this is the granularity that regulated assets hope to see. It does not need to disclose user privacy details to everyone; it needs the system to determine at the interaction level whether you meet the conditions and to be able to reproduce the judgment basis afterward. If Dusk can solidly manage this state, its compliance is not merely verbal but systemic.
The second part is that transaction records cannot equal public scrutiny; regulatory submissions must have an authorized perspective.
The most critical link in post-trade is submission and traceability. The securities market is not 'open to everyone,' but it is 'necessary people must be able to see.' Here, the difficulty is particularly real: market participants want business relationships not to be scrutinized, while regulators and auditors want key facts to be verifiable. The crypto world often positions these two things against each other: either full transparency or full privacy. Dusk's positioning determines that it cannot take extremes; it must provide an authorized perspective.
I won't write technical terms here; I will only write about the results I care about: whether Dusk's system can allow the authorized party to obtain enough information to complete regulatory submissions and audit reproduction without leaking relationship profiles. Here, 'relationship profiles' is not an abstract term; it is a real-world business sensitive point. Who bought in large quantities at what time, who exited in concentration at what time, who has stable trading relationships with whom, and who bears the market-making role—all of these, once pieced together by observers, will cause serious funds to exit directly. Because they are not here to do a public broadcast; they are here to do business.
Thus, the real exam for Dusk between privacy and auditing is: can it separate 'verifiability' from 'observability'? Post-trade submissions need to be verifiable but do not need to be observable. Auditing needs to be reproducible but does not need to throw all the details to the entire network. Dusk, following the regulated route, must systemically mechanize the authorized perspective rather than rely on the team to explain 'we can provide data.' A system relying on explanations will be stuck at the post-trade hurdle.
The third part is that clearing and settlement are not simple transfers; they require finality and responsibility boundaries.
In the crypto world, settlement is often referred to as 'settlement is complete once the on-chain transfer is done.' But the settlement of regulated assets goes far beyond just transfers; it includes finality, delivery price, failure handling, dispute resolution, and counterparty risk boundaries. In the real world, the reason for the existence of a clearing system is to detach risks from trading actions and turn them into manageable processes.
If Dusk truly wants to accept regulated assets, it must at least be able to answer several very specific questions: how is the finality of settlement defined, how to handle on-chain failures or off-chain price failures, who bears the responsibility, whether there is a rollback or freeze mechanism allowed by compliance, and what the trigger conditions, approval paths, and reproducible evidence for freezing are. Here, I do not expect it to solve all problems at once, but it must acknowledge these issues in its design and gradually implement them in the product path.
The reason I emphasize responsibility boundaries is that regulated assets fear not the problems themselves, but the lack of boundaries after problems arise. No boundaries mean everyone may take the blame, and institutions will not participate. DuskTrade's approach of using a waitlist, progressing by region, and emphasizing the rhythm of onboarding, in my view, lays the groundwork for future responsibility boundaries. If it is slow just to 'appear compliant,' it is meaningless. If it is to make the post-trade responsibility chain controllable, then this path has value.
The fourth part is that asset registration and position reconciliation are core; Dusk must be able to complete reconciliation without exposing the distribution of holdings.
The securities market has a very real system requirement called reconciliation. Whose positions are they, when did they change hands, how are corporate actions handled, are there duplicate registrations, are there frozen positions, are there restricted transfer positions? These things are not determined at the time of trading but are maintained long-term after the trade. Without reconciliation capability, the market won't last long.
Reconciliation brings a contradiction: it requires accuracy, verifiability, and traceability, but the distribution of holdings is highly sensitive information. If you expose the distribution of holdings to the entire network, it is equivalent to exposing market structure, institutional positions, and market-making strategies. Participants in regulated assets will not accept such exposure. The value of Dusk's route lies here: it must provide a way for reconciliation to occur, for the authorizing party to verify, but the distribution of holdings does not become material that can be pieced together by the entire network.
I am cautious writing this, as I do not want to pretend that Dusk has already turned reconciliation into a mature system. What I can write is a real judgment: if Dusk's future implementation relies on regulated assets, it must inevitably go through registration and reconciliation. If it only emphasizes trading experience and does not emphasize post-trade registration, reconciliation, and corporate action capabilities, then it will ultimately be marginalized by real finance. You can be lively in the short term, but you cannot sustain it for a quarter.
The fifth part is that corporate actions and compliance event handling are the real 'daily operations of regulated assets.'
Many people writing about on-chain assets like to discuss issuance and trading, but in reality, corporate actions are much more frequent. Dividends, stock splits, mergers, redemptions, forced conversions, information disclosure triggers, suspending trading, and handling abnormal fluctuations. These are not low-probability events; they are daily occurrences.
If Dusk wants to create an on-chain securities market, it must view corporate actions as part of the system, not as temporary scripts at the application layer. The most challenging aspect of corporate actions is that the rules must be executed, the execution must be explainable, the explanation must be reproducible, and yet not all individuals' behaviors and states can be disclosed to unrelated parties.
I will specifically look at whether Dusk can form a standard processing method for corporate actions in the future, such as how the system notifies qualified participants when a certain action is triggered, how it restricts unqualified participants, how it records selection results, and how it provides an auditable evidence chain afterward. If these things can only rely on 'operational manual handling,' then it is still just a traditional system dressed in a blockchain shell. The value of Dusk must be reflected in its mechanism.
The sixth part is that standards and interoperability are not just icing on the cake; they are prerequisites for whether the post-trade system can be integrated.
I have written about interoperability in previous articles, but this time I will discuss it again from the post-trade perspective because the logic is completely different. Interoperability is not for the sake of excitement but for integration. The regulated asset market cannot operate in a self-contained manner on a single chain; it needs to connect to larger pools of capital and collaborate with data sources, custody, compliance services, and settlement arrangements. Without standards, the cost of integration will be prohibitively high. Without interoperability, assets will become islands, and exit paths will become fragile.
But interoperability will also amplify post-trade risks. After crossing environments, whether rules are consistent, how responsibility boundaries are drawn, how disputes are handled, and how settlement failures are traced. If Dusk wants to make interoperability a long-term capability, it cannot just talk about connection; it must design the responsibility chain after the connection as well. In the world of regulated assets, connection is not victory; a clearly defined connection is victory.
After writing these six parts, I will return to Dusk's recent actions and give a non-repetitive conclusive judgment.
My view of Dusk has become 'harder': it is not about who tells a better story; it is about who is willing to turn the dirty work of post-trade into a systemic capability. If the product path of DuskTrade can create a small closed loop in the future, even if the scale is not large, but can cover the admission status, trading, post-trade registration, verification of the authorized perspective, one corporate action or one abnormal handling, then its value will instantly shift from concept to capability. This capability cannot be replaced by short-term emotions.
I also have to express my uncertainties to prevent you from thinking I am taking sides. My uncertainty lies in rhythm and trade-offs. The stricter the post-trade system gets, the heavier the product experience often is, and the slower the growth will be. The crypto market is very unfriendly to slowness, and prices will also be very unfriendly to slowness. Dusk must make long-term trade-offs between 'real compliance' and 'usable experience,' and the trade-offs must be consistent. As long as it distorts in the face of popularity and gives up post-trade capabilities for short-term stimulation, it will lose the most valuable positioning of regulated assets.
So I ultimately write this as a very realistic self-requirement: in the future, when I write about Dusk, I will try to verify it from a post-trade perspective. Every time it takes an action, I will ask: can this action make the post-trade system more usable, more reproducible, and less leaking? If it can, I will give it points. If not, I will treat it as noise.
I don't want to write about Dusk as a 'must succeed' or 'must fail'; that would be lazy. I just want to write about the set of real problems it must face. The regulated asset market does not rely on shouting it out; it relies on this system running out of post-trade.
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