Dusk is a Layer 1 blockchain established in 2018, focusing on an interesting direction — combining compliance in finance with privacy protection, two seemingly contradictory requirements. In simple terms, it aims to be the bridge between traditional finance and blockchain.

From a technical perspective, Dusk employs a three-layer modular design. The bottom layer is DuskDS, a data settlement layer responsible for asset clearing, data storage, and consensus validation—handling core tasks to ensure transaction security and immutability. The middle layer is DuskEVM, an application layer that is quite user-friendly — supporting Solidity smart contracts and directly compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem, making migration easier for developers. The top layer is DuskVM, a privacy layer that is the core innovation, integrating zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption technologies to protect transaction privacy while ensuring auditability — which is especially important for institutional applications.

The overall design philosophy is: supporting DeFi applications, meeting the tokenization needs of real-world assets (RWA), and reassuring institutional clients. Such a architecture combination is indeed rare in Layer 1.