[ANN] | DUSK Network | Privacy-oriented blockchain for Digital Securities!

[TheLivingcrypto]

Why don't you build on top of Ethereum? Other projects did so and that worked out well. Building your own blockchain takes a lot of time and effort, which could then be spent on other things like marketing.

[1713256107]

1713256107

[1713256107]

1713256107

[1713256107]

1713256107

[DuskNetwork]

Why don't you build on top of Ethereum? Other projects did so and that worked out well. Building your own blockchain takes a lot of time and effort, which could then be spent on other things like marketing.

Ethereum offers no ledger privacy apart from zk-SNARKS (which is reliant on a trusted setup which needs to run at any configuration change). This basically forces issuers to avail of off-chain solutions which is very expensive and defeats the purpose of 1) decentralization 2) common task automation 3) streamline legal process 4) performances (as trading restriction needs to be arbitrated all the time through third party smart contracts, rather than being embedded at protocol level). So, to be able to meet the requirements of STOs, Ethereum needs third party platforms (like Polymath, Harbor, etc etc) which are basically application-level smart contracts, which resort mostly to off-chain processing, with no exception.

This is also because these platforms have absolutely no say at the protocol level and must adapt to what it is available to them. In that respect, they have a very limited control on the confidentiality level (and in fact they resort almost always to suboptimal off-chain solutions - see for example Harbor, Polymath or even Securitize) and are bound to biblical release time for anything that revolves around NFRs (Non Functional Requirements, such as, for instance, scalability, security, resource management, network configurations, SLAs, etc etc) since Ethereum must scale GLOBALLY all the propositions (meaning smart contracts or set of smart contracts).

Dusk is NOT a general purpose smart contract platform.
It is extremely focused on the use cases it intends to unlock and as a result it can be very specific in the strategies it adopts to scale and satisfy the NFRs of the use cases at hand.

It basically focuses on providing the right confidentiality in the 3 different scenario that render the platform a true network:
1 - Unidirectional atomic transfer of value (basically, payments)
2 - Bidirectional atomic exchange of value (transfer of asset ownership - securities fall in this category)
3 - Time unbound exchange of value (transmission of data stream - such as audiovisual conferencing, content streaming, etc)

We are gonna rollout sequentially the three layers of the network, which will each unlock one of these 3 parts
However we believe that 2 is the most critical as it taps into a market which potential is in the Trillions of Euros
Since we are heavily partial for this particular use case, it is very logical that we adjust the protocol to satisfy all the regulations (and not, like in the cases above, adjust the application layer to workaround the protocol limitations)

To give you an example of what we can do on Dusk which would be unthinkable in Ethereum please consider the following feature.

Dusk decouples the (centralized) KYC/AML vendor process from the (decentralized) security issuance and transaction arbitration with the aid of time-locked accumulators. Cryptographic accumulators are ideal for implementing zero-knowledge white/black listing accreditation of (un-)compliant investors and automated accreditation. Also, expiry mechanism can be added for forcing rechecks. It roughly works in the following way: as soon as the KYC/AML process completes, the transactor identifier (basically his registered wallet address, but it can also be something else, i.e. biometric data, etc) is committed to the accumulator, which remains opaque and discloses nothing of its set. A witness (called compliance witness) is thus generated and returned to the applicant. Such witness is the proof of set inclusion. From that point on, all transactions related to that particular asset class (token) must include the compliance witness. Since the info is directly added as payload of our own (improved) version of bulletproof transactions, the need for open data inspection on transaction clearance is therefore removed. The accumulator is stored on-chain (as it basically is just a number) and recheck forcing can happen through a removal operation which activation can be coded trustlessly and can be as simple as a periodic expiry or by encoding more sophisticated rules through a (zk-)smart contract.
Dusk will host the accumulators directly ON CHAIN, since it is line with our strategy to handle scenario nr. 2 of the above list

Ethereum would never do such a thing considering that it would not make sense to store a data structure on chain that is specific for a tiny fraction of its applications (i.e. Polymath and Harbor) and would be completely useless for, say, propositions such as Omisego, Kyber, Basic Attention Token, Bancor, Status, Civic, Aragon, etc etc.

This means that the applications would have to battle against the Ethereum protocol (i.e. move an eventual accumulator off-chain to the detriment of decentralization).

This would have nefarious consequences for scalability as well, considering that these proposition must resort to  continuously calling smart contracts in order to arbitrate the transaction operations (to the detriment of both performance and privacy), while Dusk is in the liberty of enriching the transaction directly with zero knowledge data from the transactors (the compliance witness), leaving absolute liberty over which vendor the issuer wants to rely upon and keeping the centralized compliance-related operations (like for instance KYC/AML) separated from the transaction stream.

[TheLivingcrypto]

Why don't you build on top of Ethereum? Other projects did so and that worked out well. Building your own blockchain takes a lot of time and effort, which could then be spent on other things like marketing.

Ethereum offers no ledger privacy apart from zk-SNARKS (which is reliant on a trusted setup which needs to run at any configuration change). This basically forces issuers to avail of off-chain solutions which is very expensive and defeats the purpose of 1) decentralization 2) common task automation 3) streamline legal process 4) performances (as trading restriction needs to be arbitrated all the time through third party smart contracts, rather than being embedded at protocol level). So, to be able to meet the requirements of STOs, Ethereum needs third party platforms (like Polymath, Harbor, etc etc) which are basically application-level smart contracts, which resort mostly to off-chain processing, with no exception.

This is also because these platforms have absolutely no say at the protocol level and must adapt to what it is available to them. In that respect, they have a very limited control on the confidentiality level (and in fact they resort almost always to suboptimal off-chain solutions - see for example Harbor, Polymath or even Securitize) and are bound to biblical release time for anything that revolves around NFRs (Non Functional Requirements, such as, for instance, scalability, security, resource management, network configurations, SLAs, etc etc) since Ethereum must scale GLOBALLY all the propositions (meaning smart contracts or set of smart contracts).

Dusk is NOT a general purpose smart contract platform.
It is extremely focused on the use cases it intends to unlock and as a result it can be very specific in the strategies it adopts to scale and satisfy the NFRs of the use cases at hand.

It basically focuses on providing the right confidentiality in the 3 different scenario that render the platform a true network:
1 - Unidirectional atomic transfer of value (basically, payments)
2 - Bidirectional atomic exchange of value (transfer of asset ownership - securities fall in this category)
3 - Time unbound exchange of value (transmission of data stream - such as audiovisual conferencing, content streaming, etc)

We are gonna rollout sequentially the three layers of the network, which will each unlock one of these 3 parts
However we believe that 2 is the most critical as it taps into a market which potential is in the Trillions of Euros
Since we are heavily partial for this particular use case, it is very logical that we adjust the protocol to satisfy all the regulations (and not, like in the cases above, adjust the application layer to workaround the protocol limitations)

To give you an example of what we can do on Dusk which would be unthinkable in Ethereum please consider the following feature.

Dusk decouples the (centralized) KYC/AML vendor process from the (decentralized) security issuance and transaction arbitration with the aid of time-locked accumulators. Cryptographic accumulators are ideal for implementing zero-knowledge white/black listing accreditation of (un-)compliant investors and automated accreditation. Also, expiry mechanism can be added for forcing rechecks. It roughly works in the following way: as soon as the KYC/AML process completes, the transactor identifier (basically his registered wallet address, but it can also be something else, i.e. biometric data, etc) is committed to the accumulator, which remains opaque and discloses nothing of its set. A witness (called compliance witness) is thus generated and returned to the applicant. Such witness is the proof of set inclusion. From that point on, all transactions related to that particular asset class (token) must include the compliance witness. Since the info is directly added as payload of our own (improved) version of bulletproof transactions, the need for open data inspection on transaction clearance is therefore removed. The accumulator is stored on-chain (as it basically is just a number) and recheck forcing can happen through a removal operation which activation can be coded trustlessly and can be as simple as a periodic expiry or by encoding more sophisticated rules through a (zk-)smart contract.
Dusk will host the accumulators directly ON CHAIN, since it is line with our strategy to handle scenario nr. 2 of the above list

Ethereum would never do such a thing considering that it would not make sense to store a data structure on chain that is specific for a tiny fraction of its applications (i.e. Polymath and Harbor) and would be completely useless for, say, propositions such as Omisego, Kyber, Basic Attention Token, Bancor, Status, Civic, Aragon, etc etc.

This means that the applications would have to battle against the Ethereum protocol (i.e. move an eventual accumulator off-chain to the detriment of decentralization).

This would have nefarious consequences for scalability as well, considering that these proposition must resort to  continuously calling smart contracts in order to arbitrate the transaction operations (to the detriment of both performance and privacy), while Dusk is in the liberty of enriching the transaction directly with zero knowledge data from the transactors (the compliance witness), leaving absolute liberty over which vendor the issuer wants to rely upon and keeping the centralized compliance-related operations (like for instance KYC/AML) separated from the transaction stream.

Oh wow, thanks for the insane reply.

[Ninjaboiii]

Love following this thread, always some high quality questions and answers. Great to see a project being this responsive!

[DuskNetwork]

Nicolas Cimon joins Dusk Network as Strategic Advisor

We are delighted to announce that Nicolas Cimon, Managing Director of Cross Border Consulting, and former Senior Associate in Securities, is joining the Dusk Foundation as a Strategic Advisor for the Dusk Network.



Nicolas Cimon has 20 years of experience in the legal and consulting business working in Canada and Europe and serving clients in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Nicolas worked as a securities lawyer for Ogilvy Renault (now Norton Rose Fulbright) in Canada and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in France. He was involved in major initial public offerings of securities, issuance of debt and hybrid securities and takeovers of publicly listed corporations in Canada, US and Europe. In particular, Nicolas was involved in the IPO of the pan-European exchange Euronext. As a consultant, Nicolas is executing strategic recruitments for international law firms, investment banks and leading blockchain technology companies.

Nicolas graduated in law at Laval University in Quebec, Canada and completed an MBA at Laval University and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

The Dusk Foundation will benefit strongly from his expertise as a legal counsel in the securities industry to navigate through the different legal systems and setting up the standard for a decentralized privacy network and Security Token Offerings.

How to learn more about Dusk Network
The Dusk Network is a project coordinated by the Dusk Foundation. We are a decentralized ecosystem entirely focused on providing the perfect trade-off between privacy and transparency. Dusk protects privacy and fits regulations in payments, communications and asset transfers.

Please consider joining us at the following media:

• Website
• FAQ
• Telegram
• Twitter
• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• GitHub

[Altcoinrusher]

By observing how the team answers to the communities queries, I can surmise that the team knows what they are doing and and very knowledgeable in blockchain technology especially all  about on this project. That is a good indicator.

[Amelie Poulain]

Nicolas Cimon joins Dusk Network as Strategic Advisor

We are delighted to announce that Nicolas Cimon, Managing Director of Cross Border Consulting, and former Senior Associate in Securities, is joining the Dusk Foundation as a Strategic Advisor for the Dusk Network.



Nicolas Cimon has 20 years of experience in the legal and consulting business working in Canada and Europe and serving clients in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Nicolas worked as a securities lawyer for Ogilvy Renault (now Norton Rose Fulbright) in Canada and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in France. He was involved in major initial public offerings of securities, issuance of debt and hybrid securities and takeovers of publicly listed corporations in Canada, US and Europe. In particular, Nicolas was involved in the IPO of the pan-European exchange Euronext. As a consultant, Nicolas is executing strategic recruitments for international law firms, investment banks and leading blockchain technology companies.

Nicolas graduated in law at Laval University in Quebec, Canada and completed an MBA at Laval University and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

The Dusk Foundation will benefit strongly from his expertise as a legal counsel in the securities industry to navigate through the different legal systems and setting up the standard for a decentralized privacy network and Security Token Offerings.

How to learn more about Dusk Network
The Dusk Network is a project coordinated by the Dusk Foundation. We are a decentralized ecosystem entirely focused on providing the perfect trade-off between privacy and transparency. Dusk protects privacy and fits regulations in payments, communications and asset transfers.

Please consider joining us at the following media:

• Website
• FAQ
• Telegram
• Twitter
• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• GitHub

Wow! Congratulations! when such people with great experience and knowledge join the project it makes the project better!

[viljy]

What you mean? You will have smart-contracts for creatin tokens like Ethereum as well? Whats mean your Consensus "SBA⋆" ?

SBA⋆ is a form of consensus. Currently the most used mechanisms for consensus are either PoW (proof-of-work, mining) and PoS (proof-of-stake, staking).

SBA⋆ uses existing ideas like Cryptographic Sortition(lottery), and combines it with concepts like stealth time-locked transactions to implement simple but secure communication that can be audited. SBA* makes use of a few different types of actors in the network to reach consensus:

• (super)Nodes. These are points in the network that facilitate transactions. They compete with each other for the generating and proposing blocks. These are computationally very light tasks, and a node will not require high computational power, or a big stake.
• Provisioners. These are nodes that have committed a certain minimum stake to the Dusk Network and take care of more intensive tasks such as block verification, voting, and notarization (VVN operations). These types of nodes are non-transactional.

By splitting tasks based on intensity and relaying them to transaction and non-transactional nodes the network’s speed greatly increases, whilst decreasing the chance of a partitioned network, and guaranteeing a higher availability of the network. Using SBA* there is no chance of an unintended fork of the blockchain, meaning there will be no doubt about what the main branch is. This translates into the appealing property of achieving transaction “finality” as soon as consensus is reached for a block.

That is, due to the division of functions between the nodes and Provisioners, the transaction rate will increase significantly? What is approximately the speed of transactions per second? And also to complete the transaction you need 1 confirmation from Provisioner?

[DuskNetwork]

That is, due to the division of functions between the nodes and Provisioners, the transaction rate will increase significantly? What is approximately the speed of transactions per second? And also to complete the transaction you need 1 confirmation from Provisioner?

More than TPS, which is a meaningless measure when in presence of an adaptive block size, it makes more sense to speak about throughput. Early experimentation shows that we can achieve extreme throughput by propagating block and block hashes separately (and worry about consistency later, as reconciliation would be indeed a separate matter). In this case it would not be excluded a throughput roughly 10^2 that of Bitcoin.

This expectation is dependent on a lot of configuration throttling, as it would be connected to a few implementation choices. The most important of which are probably the ring signature size and the flavour of proof range used (bulletproof being my first candidate)

[Makkara]

At least we can clearly say DuskNetwork knows what is talking about and it's actually interesting reading the answers and insights of how their product is going to work.

In the case somebody has the hash of a block in hand however i don't understand what advantage would give, since the information you need is actually in the block. 

If you can clarify that thank you

[pynetx]

At least we can clearly say DuskNetwork knows what is talking about and it's actually interesting reading the answers and insights of how their product is going to work.

In the case somebody has the hash of a block in hand however i don't understand what advantage would give, since the information you need is actually in the block. 

If you can clarify that thank you

Yeah, if we browse through the pages of this ANN the discussions are really of high quality.

[jonnytracker]

So many data project, I wonder what is special with this one

[king_of_alts]

So many data project, I wonder what is special with this one

The WP is very technical so maybe the team is trying to find new and different solutions.

[loup]

So many data project, I wonder what is special with this one

The WP is very technical so maybe the team is trying to find new and different solutions.

I think they have a feature of transfering data safely that makes this project different.

[magisterr]

They want to issue security tokens? But for security tokens you must have a lot of licenses, and I dont think that SEC or any other government structure allow issue tokens on anonymous platform ...  

[Jay2408]

They want to issue security tokens? But for security tokens you must have a lot of licenses, and I dont think that SEC or any other government structure allow issue tokens on anonymous platform ...  

From their FAQ section:

Is DUSK a security token?
No. DUSK is not a security because it presents a protocol-regulated inflationary mechanism and provides no profit or dividends whatsoever. It absolves the same role of Ether in the Ethereum ecosystem.

[iad_xo]

Q2 next year for mainnet release.  Do you think DUSK have enough resources to execute current roadmap?

[o48o]

Why don't you build on top of Ethereum? Other projects did so and that worked out well. Building your own blockchain takes a lot of time and effort, which could then be spent on other things like marketing.

Ethereum offers no ledger privacy apart from zk-SNARKS (which is reliant on a trusted setup which needs to run at any configuration change). This basically forces issuers to avail of off-chain solutions which is very expensive and defeats the purpose of 1) decentralization 2) common task automation 3) streamline legal process 4) performances (as trading restriction needs to be arbitrated all the time through third party smart contracts, rather than being embedded at protocol level). So, to be able to meet the requirements of STOs, Ethereum needs third party platforms (like Polymath, Harbor, etc etc) which are basically application-level smart contracts, which resort mostly to off-chain processing, with no exception.

This is also because these platforms have absolutely no say at the protocol level and must adapt to what it is available to them. In that respect, they have a very limited control on the confidentiality level (and in fact they resort almost always to suboptimal off-chain solutions - see for example Harbor, Polymath or even Securitize) and are bound to biblical release time for anything that revolves around NFRs (Non Functional Requirements, such as, for instance, scalability, security, resource management, network configurations, SLAs, etc etc) since Ethereum must scale GLOBALLY all the propositions (meaning smart contracts or set of smart contracts).

Dusk is NOT a general purpose smart contract platform.
It is extremely focused on the use cases it intends to unlock and as a result it can be very specific in the strategies it adopts to scale and satisfy the NFRs of the use cases at hand.

It basically focuses on providing the right confidentiality in the 3 different scenario that render the platform a true network:
1 - Unidirectional atomic transfer of value (basically, payments)
2 - Bidirectional atomic exchange of value (transfer of asset ownership - securities fall in this category)
3 - Time unbound exchange of value (transmission of data stream - such as audiovisual conferencing, content streaming, etc)

We are gonna rollout sequentially the three layers of the network, which will each unlock one of these 3 parts
However we believe that 2 is the most critical as it taps into a market which potential is in the Trillions of Euros
Since we are heavily partial for this particular use case, it is very logical that we adjust the protocol to satisfy all the regulations (and not, like in the cases above, adjust the application layer to workaround the protocol limitations)

To give you an example of what we can do on Dusk which would be unthinkable in Ethereum please consider the following feature.

Dusk decouples the (centralized) KYC/AML vendor process from the (decentralized) security issuance and transaction arbitration with the aid of time-locked accumulators. Cryptographic accumulators are ideal for implementing zero-knowledge white/black listing accreditation of (un-)compliant investors and automated accreditation. Also, expiry mechanism can be added for forcing rechecks. It roughly works in the following way: as soon as the KYC/AML process completes, the transactor identifier (basically his registered wallet address, but it can also be something else, i.e. biometric data, etc) is committed to the accumulator, which remains opaque and discloses nothing of its set. A witness (called compliance witness) is thus generated and returned to the applicant. Such witness is the proof of set inclusion. From that point on, all transactions related to that particular asset class (token) must include the compliance witness. Since the info is directly added as payload of our own (improved) version of bulletproof transactions, the need for open data inspection on transaction clearance is therefore removed. The accumulator is stored on-chain (as it basically is just a number) and recheck forcing can happen through a removal operation which activation can be coded trustlessly and can be as simple as a periodic expiry or by encoding more sophisticated rules through a (zk-)smart contract.
Dusk will host the accumulators directly ON CHAIN, since it is line with our strategy to handle scenario nr. 2 of the above list

Ethereum would never do such a thing considering that it would not make sense to store a data structure on chain that is specific for a tiny fraction of its applications (i.e. Polymath and Harbor) and would be completely useless for, say, propositions such as Omisego, Kyber, Basic Attention Token, Bancor, Status, Civic, Aragon, etc etc.

This means that the applications would have to battle against the Ethereum protocol (i.e. move an eventual accumulator off-chain to the detriment of decentralization).

This would have nefarious consequences for scalability as well, considering that these proposition must resort to  continuously calling smart contracts in order to arbitrate the transaction operations (to the detriment of both performance and privacy), while Dusk is in the liberty of enriching the transaction directly with zero knowledge data from the transactors (the compliance witness), leaving absolute liberty over which vendor the issuer wants to rely upon and keeping the centralized compliance-related operations (like for instance KYC/AML) separated from the transaction stream.

I just wanted to express my gratification for actually taking your time and answering on questions and explaining in depth. I can't remember ever seeing this level of detailed answers on any ann thread.

[cevap]

By observing how the team answers to the communities queries, I can surmise that the team knows what they are doing and and very knowledgeable in blockchain technology especially all  about on this project. That is a good indicator.

It's rare nowadays one can encounter such level of professionalism among crypto projects. It's definitely a good sign.

[belechau]

Nicolas Cimon joins Dusk Network as Strategic Advisor

We are delighted to announce that Nicolas Cimon, Managing Director of Cross Border Consulting, and former Senior Associate in Securities, is joining the Dusk Foundation as a Strategic Advisor for the Dusk Network.



Nicolas Cimon has 20 years of experience in the legal and consulting business working in Canada and Europe and serving clients in Europe, Middle East and Africa. Nicolas worked as a securities lawyer for Ogilvy Renault (now Norton Rose Fulbright) in Canada and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in France. He was involved in major initial public offerings of securities, issuance of debt and hybrid securities and takeovers of publicly listed corporations in Canada, US and Europe. In particular, Nicolas was involved in the IPO of the pan-European exchange Euronext. As a consultant, Nicolas is executing strategic recruitments for international law firms, investment banks and leading blockchain technology companies.

Nicolas graduated in law at Laval University in Quebec, Canada and completed an MBA at Laval University and Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

The Dusk Foundation will benefit strongly from his expertise as a legal counsel in the securities industry to navigate through the different legal systems and setting up the standard for a decentralized privacy network and Security Token Offerings.

How to learn more about Dusk Network
The Dusk Network is a project coordinated by the Dusk Foundation. We are a decentralized ecosystem entirely focused on providing the perfect trade-off between privacy and transparency. Dusk protects privacy and fits regulations in payments, communications and asset transfers.

Please consider joining us at the following media:

• Website
• FAQ
• Telegram
• Twitter
• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• GitHub

Wow! Congratulations! when such people with great experience and knowledge join the project it makes the project better!

Actually, the adhesion of people like Cimon, provided with capacity and experience, bring to any project an extra potential, especially with imminent regulations and adverse market situations, is someone to contribute during and even after sale, in the long term work . Congratulations