The initial expectations of blockchain technology were based on transparency. Trustless systems were thought to be possible due to public ledgers, validators, and change states. With time, this assumption demonstrated its limits. For markets to be functional, transparency must be greater than its absence. Privately, transparency prevents markets. Dusk is based on this understanding. It develops blockchain ecosystems from financial realism: privacy, correctness, and accountability, must coexist.
Dusk positions itself with architectural clarity: financial systems must have confidentiality. In any domain, sensitive financial information is protected, not to conceal malfeasance, but to sustain competition, lessen information imbalance, and keep market constituents protected from excessive culpability. Dusk keeps fundamental economic principles intact by embedding privacy preserving (Plugged) verification into the base layer. Finance no longer is forced to operate on transparent rails.
Dusk is built on the principles of privacy that is verifiable. At the level of protocols, Dusk ensures that the confidentiality of transactions, ownership of assets, and execution of smart contracts is not compromised.
This removes the false tradeoff between secrecy and trust that has affected previous designs of blockchains. Participants do not need to disclose full transaction details to the entire network to achieve consensus. Instead, a system just needs to be correct, and this can be enforced cryptographically. The system can be auditable, but not overly intrusive.
Many more use cases can operate on-chain as a result of this design. The more real world financial instruments that are more complex cannot be used with open ledgers. Regulated assets, bilateral agreements, and institutional trading processes require control over what information can be shared. If a use case lacks privacy, then it has to resort to centralized solutions outside of the blockchain ecosystem. Dusk allows these activities to be done in a decentralized context without losing operational freedom.
The focus to create a dusk system that lends itself to most financial systems simply because it is just so predictable. It must be predictable. The rules must not be arbitrary and the system must produce the same outcomes every time. Dusk’s design embodies this ideal by defaulting to formal correctness and cryptographic simplicity over other attributes.
Dusk has economic logic. While other companies may rely on loss-leading subsidized activities to engage users, Dusk has developed a strong value proposition for users. The reason for this is that, unlike most firms, Dusk has privacy as a core value proposition for using the network. Because of this, Dusk is focused on providing value to its users rather than creating engagement activities. Dusk has created demand structures that allow users to do things that are impossible to do on a public blockchain. This is because Dusk provides users the ability to do things that are otherwise impossible to be done on public blockchains.
Dusk’s interpretation of decentralization is far more advanced than many other firms, especially when it comes to Dusk’s understanding of the value of decentralization. d d Aside from the typical characteristics of public blockchain systems, Dusk has distributed validation and reliance on a social contract. It has a strong mathematical and algorithmic assurance on its systems. This creates an entire system that is auditable, resilient, and has minimal reliance on a social contract.
Dusk also embodies an important balance between public blockchain systems and private institutional systems. With institutions, the need for secrecy is not an end in and of itself. It is the need for control over the exposure of system information, the guarantees around the system, and the confidence in the execution.