This Tuesday, we had another Team Hangout with Emanuele Francioni (CEO of Dusk). He shared a ton of valuable updates and broader progress on Dusk’s infrastructure, partnerships, and roadmap.
If you missed the session or want a recap, here’s the TL;DR with the biggest insights:
RWA Dinner Recap & Afterhours Alpha
- Dusk co-sponsored a private industry dinner with 21X and Halborn.
- Attendees included Dutch regulators (DNB), major Benelux banks, asset managers, and infrastructure players.
- Talks included how Dusk’s infrastructure fits into banks’ actual business (cash, payments), rather than them tokenizing assets directly.
- Many banks (e.g., Rabobank, ING, ABN AMRO) are working on consortium stablecoins, mostly aimed at cash settlement use cases, not payments.
Money Market Funds (MMFs) Are the Real Alpha
- Conversations with institutions focused on tokenizing real yield-bearing assets, especially MMFs.
- MMFs are highly liquid and a perfect fit for Dusk’s infrastructure and upcoming marketplace.
- Dusk aims to onboard these to NPEX, enabling users to access real-world yield.
What Banks Really Want
- Banks don’t care about tokenizing assets, that’s not their job.
- They’re focused on using tokenized assets for settlement, liquidity, and efficiency.
- Dusk’s pitch: let us handle infra, you focus on your actual business.
- Example: NPEX becoming a client (or vice versa) for settlement using bank-backed stablecoins or MMF tokens.
Dusk’s “No Hype, Just Launch” Approach
- From now on, Dusk won’t make announcements without go-live readiness.
- Ema: “We’ve learned that hype before deployment just leads to letdowns.”
NPEX dApp & L2 Plans
- NPEX “dApp” is both backend infra and front-facing app, being built in-house and with third-party teams.
- Will power access to tokenized securities from NPEX and 21X.
- Ultimately we want to attract third party applications because those bring their own user base.
Quantoz Stablecoin
- Deployment is paused until Dusk EVM goes live, to avoid rebuilding L1 infra from scratch.
- Dusk EVM will enable fast integration using standard Solidity tooling and infra (RPCs, interfaces, etc.).
- Ema: “This is done. We’re just waiting to deploy it on the right stack.”
Layer-1 Node Role & Roadmap
- L1 will remain focused on security, staking, and consensus.
- Future: L1 = consensus + data availability → L2s (Dusk EVM) = execution.
- Separate private execution layer (Piecrust) for full compliance + confidentiality.
- Nodes will become leaner and more modular, but core to securing all future activity.
Market Cap & Node Security
- Lower market cap can impact governance security, but not a concern for now.
- Node security and stake distribution are stable.
Dusk EVM
- Current focus: launching Dusk EVM as main execution layer.
- Core team + 3rd-party developers (20+ engineers) working to close integration gaps.
- Once live, Quantoz and other dApps can launch much quicker.
- Goal: attract DeFi builders, bridge providers, and launch real financial applications.
Execution Layer = Key to Adoption
- Dusk EVM enables easy integration for DeFi and RWA builders.
- Existing apps like Aave, Uniswap, Gnosis can be ported over or forked.
- The differentiator? Only Dusk offers real regulated securities on-chain.
2025 Vision of Success
- Hundreds of millions of euros in tokenized RWAs locked on-chain.
- Live 24/7 trading (possibly hybrid during market hours).
- Seamless UX: fiat on/off ramps, account abstraction, and wallet integration.
- Real-world regulated infra powering DeFi access to RWAs.
Got questions or thoughts on what Ema shared? Drop them below.
And see you next Tuesday for our next hangout at 4PM CET.
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