I’m looking at Dusk because it tackles a real finance problem: institutions need rules and reporting, while people need privacy. Dusk is a Layer 1 built for regulated markets, so it aims to make privacy possible without blocking audits. The base settlement layer is designed to stay stable, while an EVM execution environment lets developers reuse familiar smart contract tooling.
The chain supports two transfer styles, a public account model and a shielded note model, and both settle on the same foundation. That means a use case can stay transparent when it must, or stay confidential when exposure would be harmful. There is also an identity and compliance direction that focuses on proving requirements without sharing more personal data than needed.
Under the hood they’re using a proof of stake design with committee voting to reach fast, deterministic finality, so settlement can feel more like a receipt than a guess. The purpose is to help tokenized assets and compliant applications move on-chain today while keeping sensitive details private by default and revealing only what is necessary when rules require it.