What is Dusk? Founded in 2018, Dusk is a Layer-1 blockchain designed to provide institutional-level and privacy and compliance in order to make it possible for anybody to trade real-world assets from their wallet. Built for regulated and decentralized finance, Dusk aims to evolve the financial landscape by making it possible for regulated assets to be brought on-chain. Dusk’s three core pillars are; privacy and compliance in order to bring institutional-level assets to anyone’s wallet. Using cryptographically secure Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to maintain privacy, the research team at Dusk have been leading the way in the developments of ZKPs, having had papers published on their work. A custom-built ZKP virtual machine, Piecrust, is the first of its kind and breaking new ground in the spaces of blockchain and privacy. Featuring a suite of products, including Citadel, a ZKP licensing product which is well-suited to KYC/AML procedures as well as subscription-based models, Dusk is building the infrastructure for the economy of the future. Benefits for businesses and institutions include automated and programmable compliance, instant settlement finality, and access to unified liquidity. Through the use of private smart contracts, Dusk is even able to provide levels of privacy above what banks and institutions are used to. For users, Dusk offers the possibility to break out of the crypto sandbox, and make it possible to trade real-world, regulated assets with the same level of ease and autonomy as they can trade digital assets. The Dusk network is Proof-of-Stake (PoS) and powered and secured by the DUSK token. The blockchain is public and open for anyone to use and participate in the consensus mechanism. Validators can run nodes by staking DUSK to secure the network, and transactions are paid using DUSK. Through the use of a transactional model called Phoenix, Dusk focuses on bringing privacy and anonymity to both transactions and smart contracts. Additionally, tokens deployed on Dusk can build on top of Zedger, a hybrid privacy-preserving model specifically modeled for security tokens. The ‘Segregated Byzantine Agreement’ (SBA) consensus mechanism secures the network. According to the SBA is an improvement over the underlying PoS mechanism as it combines existing ideas like cryptographic sortition (lottery), stealth time-locked transactions (private stake amounts) and a reputation module to increase the chances of selecting honest nodes and further promote decentralization. Dusk is based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.