Having experienced the ups and downs of the crypto world for nearly ten years, I have seen many projects fade away quickly, and a few quietly gain momentum. DUSK is a typical example of the latter — since its founding in 2018, it has not relied on marketing gimmicks to stay relevant for eight years, but has instead focused on refining technology and expanding its ecosystem step by step.

I started deploying in DUSK in 2020. At that time, it acquired a 10% stake in NPEX and announced plans to build a compliant digital asset exchange. Honestly, the general sentiment in the community was not optimistic — people thought crypto and compliance were enemies. But my logic was simple: for this market to truly take off, it must connect with the traditional financial system and follow a compliant route. So I took a small position to test the waters, and I’ve held on ever since. During this period, I experienced significant price corrections, but each time I saw steady progress — testing the mainnet, updating the roadmap, and launching an ecosystem fund.

What impressed me most was the launch of the DayBreak testnet in 2022. I participated in the testing; at that time, the features were still quite basic, but I could clearly sense its design philosophy — entirely focused on regulated financial scenarios. During that period, many projects were hyping concepts like the metaverse and GameFi, but DUSK was deeply cultivating privacy and compliance technology stacks. This non-conformist execution made me even more confident that this is a long-term direction worth paying attention to.

Later, it launched Citadel SDK and Rusk VM 2.0, with each version iteration solving real-world problems. This "doing things without boasting" style is particularly rare in the restless crypto market.