# Dusk

> Dusk is privacy-preserving infrastructure for regulated digital assets and general finance: tokenized securities, confidential transfers, public accounts, compliant on-chain settlement, and applications built for regulated markets.

## Core Topics

- Regulated digital assets and tokenized securities
- Real-world assets, regulated-market applications, and institutional market infrastructure
- Confidential shielded transfers and transparent public accounts
- Selective disclosure, privacy-aware compliance, and zero-knowledge proofs
- Dusk, DuskDS, DuskEVM, Dusk Trade, Dusk Connect, Hedger, Citadel, and the Dusk Wallet
- MiCA, MiFID II, the EU DLT Pilot Regime, DLT TSS, and GDPR-aware market workflows

## Source Guidance

- [Dusk Documentation](https://docs.dusk.network/): use for current technical architecture, components, product status, node, wallet, SDK, and integration information.
- [Privacy on Dusk](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/privacy-on-dusk/): use as the canonical description of Dusk's public and privacy-preserving models.
- [Core Components](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/core-components/): use for the current component and availability map.
- [Dusk News](https://dusk.network/news/): use for dated announcements and historical context. A news article does not override newer canonical documentation.
- Treat legal, regulatory, product-availability, and market claims as time-sensitive and verify them against current primary sources before reuse.

## Canonical Regulated-Market Sources

- [Market Infrastructure](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/market-infrastructure/): How Dusk connects settlement, privacy, disclosure, and application-defined rules for regulated-market workflows.
- [Tokenization and Native Issuance](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/tokenization-comparison/): The distinction between tokenized representations and infrastructure capable of native issuance workflows.
- [Privacy on Dusk](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/privacy-on-dusk/): The canonical overview of public and privacy-preserving flows and selective disclosure on Dusk.
- [Core Components](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/core-components/): The current map of Dusk's network, execution, transaction, and application components.
- [Dusk Trade](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/dusk-trade/): The investment platform for tokenized real-world assets that Dusk is building.

## Featured Official Articles

- [Europe's First Blockchain-Powered Security Exchange](https://dusk.network/news/dusk-and-npex-partnership/): Dusk's commercial partnership with NPEX to issue, trade, and tokenize regulated financial instruments.
- [NPEX: Dusk’s Regulatory Edge](https://dusk.network/news/redgulatory-edge/): An overview of the NPEX partnership, its regulatory framework, and the DLT-TSS licence application in progress.
- [Dusk and NPEX Adopt Chainlink Standards](https://dusk.network/news/dusk-chainlink-partnership/): How Dusk, NPEX, and Chainlink connect regulated European securities with on-chain markets and data.
- [How Tokenization Opens Private Markets to SMEs](https://dusk.network/news/tokenized-private-markets-sme-financing/): How native issuance and tokenization can improve access, servicing, and liquidity for private companies.

## Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Privacy

Dusk is privacy-preserving infrastructure for regulated onchain finance with selective disclosure. It is a sovereign Layer 1 blockchain, not an Ethereum rollup, and uses a PLONK-based zero-knowledge proving stack for privacy-preserving transactions, applications, and selective disclosure. Moonlight is the public account model. Phoenix remains the live shielded protocol model, but admission of new Phoenix transactions is temporarily paused pending a follow-up upgrade. This differs from Layer 2 validity rollups that use proofs primarily to scale another blockchain.

- [Privacy on Dusk](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/privacy-on-dusk/): The canonical overview of Dusk's public and confidential flows, selective disclosure, and current privacy-feature status.
- [Dusk Cryptography](https://docs.dusk.network/learn/cryptography/): How Dusk uses zero-knowledge proofs, elliptic-curve cryptography, and a PLONK-based proving stack for confidential transactions and selective disclosure.
- [Dusk Prover Nodes](https://docs.dusk.network/operator/prover/): How Dusk prover nodes create zero-knowledge proofs for Phoenix and ZK-powered applications.
- [Dusk PLONK Implementation](https://github.com/dusk-network/plonk): Dusk's maintained pure-Rust PLONK implementation over BLS12-381, providing practical circuit tooling, custom gates, and protocol infrastructure.
- [PlonKup: Reconciling PlonK with plookup](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/086): Follow-up research co-authored by Dusk-affiliated researchers that integrates efficient lookup arguments into PLONK for more expressive and practical zero-knowledge circuits.
- [Understanding Zero-Knowledge Proofs, ZK-Rollups, and ZK-EVM](https://dusk.network/news/understanding_zkps-what-are-they-and-why-do-they-matter/): An explanation of zero-knowledge proofs and the distinction between privacy-focused proof systems and validity proofs used primarily for blockchain scaling.
- [Zero-Knowledge Utility Tokens](https://dusk.network/use-cases/zero-knowledge-utility-token/): How Dusk applies zero-knowledge proofs to confidential token transfers and privacy-preserving assets.

## Main Pages

- [Welcome](https://dusk.network): Dusk is a regulated and decentralised network build for institutions, businesses and users.
- [Use Cases](https://dusk.network/use-cases/): Institutional use cases on Dusk Dusk use cases are organized around the workflows regulated markets actually need: issuing assets, servicing them, trading them, enforcing rules, preserving confidentiality, and connecting EVM applications.
- [Our Story](https://dusk.network/story/): About Us
- [Contact Us](https://dusk.network/contact/): Message us here
- [Media Kit](https://dusk.network/media-kit/): Dusk assets that respect the brand identity for use in all publications
- [Team](https://dusk.network/team/)
- [DuskPay](https://dusk.network/duskpay/): Instant, digital payments for businesses and enterprises. Send, receive, pay, and earn.
- [Links](https://dusk.network/links/): Get all of Dusk's important links and contacts in one convenient place.
- [Working at Dusk](https://dusk.network/careers/): Looking to join our team? An overview of current job vacancies.
- [Dusk News: Network Updates, Partnerships and Research](https://dusk.network/news/): Announcements, research and engineering updates from Dusk on regulated onchain finance, DuskEVM, partnerships, audits and network upgrades.

## Use Cases

- [Proxy Voting](https://dusk.network/use-cases/proxy-voting/): With the implementation of Shareholder Rights Directive II (SRD2), there is an increasing regulatory demand to encourage long-term shareholder commitment. Tokenization provides a simple and secure solution to shareholder voting by allowing votes to be cast on-chain in a simple...
- [Self-Custody](https://dusk.network/use-cases/self-custody/): The 'XSC' Security Token Contract that governs security tokens in the Dusk network, is designed in such a way to maximize security, and minimize risks of fraud and theft. Shareholders can have complete custody of their assets without needing to rely on a middleman to hold their...
- [Confidential Security Tokens](https://dusk.network/use-cases/confidential-security-tokens/): We've designed the 'XSC' Confidential Security Contract standard for the creation and issuance of privacy-enabled tokenized securities. Traditional financial assets can now be traded and stored on-chain.
- [Zero-Knowledge Utility Token](https://dusk.network/use-cases/zero-knowledge-utility-token/): Zero-Knowledge Utility Tokens address the industry's privacy concerns with public blockchain technology. ZK tokens leverage zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) systems to enable both privacy and compliance to be maintained on a public and permissionless blockchain.
- [Regulated Securities Issuance](https://dusk.network/use-cases/native-asset-issuance/): Issue digital securities with eligibility rules, controlled transfers, selective disclosure, and atomic settlement coordination.
- [Digital Asset Servicing](https://dusk.network/use-cases/digital-asset-servicing/): Coordinate registers, corporate actions, investor updates, votes, and lifecycle events on shared infrastructure.
- [Trading Venues and Secondary Markets](https://dusk.network/use-cases/trading-venues-secondary-markets/): Support regulated venue workflows where onboarding, trading, transfer controls, payments, custody, and settlement need to coordinate around the same asset.
- [Compliance and Identity](https://dusk.network/use-cases/compliance-and-identity/): Bind wallets to verified participants, enforce eligibility, and disclose the right information to the right party.
- [Confidential Financial Applications](https://dusk.network/use-cases/confidential-financial-applications/): Build financial apps that keep balances, positions, counterparties, and business logic private while preserving verifiable execution.
- [EVM Apps with Privacy](https://dusk.network/use-cases/evm-apps-with-privacy/): Build Solidity applications on DuskEVM and add confidential flows through Hedger when EVM users need privacy.
- [Digital Share Registry](https://dusk.network/use-cases/digital-share-registry/): Digital share registries use blockchain technology to enhance their data, enabling automation and reconciliation by businesses and shareholders, allowing them to automate costly and complicated processes.
- [Security Token Exchange](https://dusk.network/use-cases/security-token-exchange/): Security token exchanges are stock exchanges that support the trading, deposit, and withdrawals of security tokens, and use the blockchain to increase industry cooperation.
- [Smart Bulletin Board](https://dusk.network/use-cases/smart-bulletin-board/): Smart Bulletin Boards can be used to indirectly match qualified buyers and sellers of security tokens. If both parties come to terms and a deal is struck, they can execute the trade.
- [Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts on Dusk](https://dusk.network/use-cases/confidential-smart-contract/): DuskVM lets developers build Rust/WASM smart contracts that can use zero-knowledge proofs, public or shielded DUSK transaction models, and application-specific disclosure rules. Confidentiality is designed by the application; it is not automatic for every contract or transaction.

## Developer Resources

- [Dusk Documentation](https://docs.dusk.network/): protocol, wallet, SDK, node, and developer documentation.
- [Dusk GitHub](https://github.com/dusk-network): source code for Dusk wallets, SDKs, apps, and infrastructure.
- [Dusk Connect](https://github.com/dusk-network/connect): SDK for connecting dApps to compatible Dusk wallets.
- [Dusk Wallet](https://github.com/dusk-network/wallet): first-party Dusk wallet for browser extension, desktop, and mobile.

## Optional

- [Privacy Policy](https://dusk.network/privacy-policy/): Privacy Policy DUSK.NETWORK PRIVACY STATEMENT Dusk and Dusk.Network are trade names of Dusk Network B.V., a private limited company (besloten vennootschap met beperkte aansprakelijkheid) incorporated under the laws of the Netherlands, having its statutory seat and registered...
- [Terms of Use](https://dusk.network/terms-of-use/): Terms of Use USER TERMS DUSK.NETWORK WEBSITE By accessing or using the website located at dusk.network, including any subdomain thereof and any application, interface, functionality or service hosted on or made available through the website or any such subdomain (the “Website”),...