To determine whether a Layer-1 project is worth paying attention to, I usually ask one question: what can it do that others can't? Take Dusk Network as an example. The project's core competitive advantages target a few key areas, which are indeed quite interesting.

First, let's talk about the most practical scenario—confidential commercial contracts. Things like supply chain financing and bidding between enterprises require confidentiality before contract terms are finalized. Dusk's privacy smart contracts are designed for this pain point: multiple parties run logic within an encrypted black box, and only the final result is disclosed. Compared to current compromise solutions, this native privacy support offers higher trustworthiness. Some startups are already testing confidential auctions for raw material procurement on the testnet.

Next is the private DeFi track. The current DeFi ecosystem has a critical flaw—complete transparency. Your positions and trading strategies are fully visible by checking on-chain data. Large traders can be sniped within minutes of entering the market. Based on Dusk, private lending pools or dark pools can be built, preventing trading counterparts from knowing your intentions in advance. Coupled with its cross-chain bridging solution, mainstream assets can smoothly enter this private DeFi system. Other privacy chains find it difficult to provide such liquidity depth.

The third direction is verifiable anonymous credentials. Using zero-knowledge proof technology, a special proof can be issued: demonstrating that you meet certain conditions (like being of legal age or having a high credit score) without revealing your true identity. This has huge potential in privacy-sensitive identity verification scenarios—such as anonymous airdrops and private voting. The project also supports open governance, allowing the community to customize credential rules for different applications.

Whether these three application directions can truly be realized depends on two key points: first, the high-performance privacy execution environment it claims (a technical barrier); second, convenient cross-chain asset entry points (a liquidity foundation). Once these prerequisites are in place, the subsequent imagination space can truly be unlocked.