In a crypto ecosystem that has clearly entered a new phase, the tokenization of real-world assets is no longer a laboratory concept. It is becoming an operational reality, tested and increasingly adopted by institutional players. It is in this context that Dusk Network stands out as one of the most serious infrastructures in the space. After more than six years of development, the network launched its mainnet on January 7, 2025. Dusk is a permissionless Layer-1 designed from the ground up for regulated on-chain finance, with a position that few protocols fully embrace: native privacy and full regulatory compliance are not opposites, they reinforce each other. Through zero-knowledge proofs, the protocol enables private transactions while remaining compliant with European frameworks such as MiCA, MiFID II, and the DLT Pilot Regime.
At the time of writing, in February 2026, the $DUSK token is trading around $0.10 to $0.11. Its market capitalization remains modest, almost negligible, relative to the size of the market it is targeting. And that market is one of the most dynamic segments of on-chain finance today. Excluding stablecoins, the value of tokenized real-world assets currently ranges between $19 and $36 billion according to aggregated sources, with nearly $9 billion concentrated in tokenized U.S. Treasuries. Medium- and long-term projections are striking. Some analysts expect the $100 billion threshold to be crossed as early as the end of 2026. By 2030, McKinsey estimates a $2 trillion market, while Ark Invest outlines far more aggressive scenarios exceeding $10 trillion when private markets, real estate, and structured debt are included.
This growth is not accidental. Tokenization delivers structural advantages that are difficult to ignore: continuous liquidity, instant asset fractionalization, a sharp reduction in intermediation costs, and near-instant settlement where traditional finance still operates on T+2 or T+3 cycles. It also opens access to asset classes historically reserved for a narrow group of investors, including real estate, private credit, and unlisted equities. As a result, the broader tokenization market is expected to grow from roughly $3.5 billion in 2024 to over 13 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 25 percent. Yet it is the RWA segment that represents the most profound structural shift.
The main bottleneck remains the radical transparency of public blockchains. By design, everything is visible, which is incompatible with institutional and regulatory requirements when it comes to portfolios, transaction sizes, and identities. Dusk addresses this friction directly. Its privacy-preserving smart contract layer enables confidential transactions, zero-knowledge compliance proofs for KYC and AML without exposing sensitive data, and programmable business logic that remains private. All of this is achieved with immediate finality, a critical feature for financial markets.
From a product perspective, the ecosystem is taking shape rapidly. Zedger enables the tokenization of equities, bonds, and real estate within a regulated framework. Dusk Pay targets MiCA-compliant payments through an electronic money token. DuskEVM provides Ethereum compatibility to attract DeFi developers, while Citadel delivers a zero-knowledge KYC solution where users retain full control over their personal data.
This positioning is already validated by concrete institutional adoption. The Dutch regulated exchange NPEX has tokenized more than €200 million worth of securities on Dusk. In late 2025, Chainlink integrated CCIP, Data Streams, and DataLink to secure cross-chain RWA transfers and compliant oracle data. Meanwhile, Quantoz is issuing a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin, EURQ, directly on the network. The 2026 roadmap follows the same trajectory, with the completion of Dusk Pay, upgrades to DuskEVM, the introduction of hyperstaking with customizable logic, the launch of Superbridge for interoperability, and a gradual rollout of on-chain governance.
On the tokenomics side, total supply is capped at 1 billion DUSK, with approximately 497 million currently in circulation. The token has clear utility within the ecosystem: staking, gas fees, governance, and collateral for privacy-enabled contracts. Hyperstaking offers yields of around 12 percent annually. At current prices, the market capitalization sits near $50 million, with a fully diluted valuation close to $100 million.
When compared to other RWA-focused projects, the discrepancy is striking. Several protocols that are less advanced technically and lack native privacy already command market caps in the hundreds of millions. If Dusk were to capture even a small fraction of the projected market, for example 0.5 percent of a $2 trillion RWA market by 2030, the resulting valuation would justify a multi-billion-dollar market cap. Even a conservative scenario, with DUSK trading at 1$ by 2027 or 2028, would represent a significant multiple from current levels while remaining reasonable relative to the addressable market.
Dusk is not a typical privacy-oriented project. It is an infrastructure designed to allow institutions to tokenize, trade, and settle real-world assets on a public blockchain without sacrificing confidentiality or compliance. As regulation tightens and demand for on-chain assets continues to grow, this positioning becomes increasingly defensible. The mainnet is live, institutional partnerships are in place, and the technology is proven. If 2025 was the year of construction, 2026 could well be the year Dusk transitions from a promising project to a core piece of next-generation financial infrastructure