This week’s team hangout with Hein focused on the final preparations for the DuskEVM public testnet, the upcoming Rusk upgrade, and how both layers are being aligned for deployment.
The discussion also covered Dusk’s evolving token utility, updates on gas fee adjustments across DuskDS and DuskEVM, the phased rollout of STOX, and how upcoming partnership announcements are being timed to align with Dusk’s next major milestones.
You can find a breakdown of the key questions and answers below 
Q1: What have you been working on this week, and what can you share with the community?
- The team has been deep in testing DuskEVM, going through full transaction flows and validating both positive and negative cases to ensure stability ahead of the public testnet.
- Components are now stable on devnet, with deposits, withdrawals, and stress tests running successfully. Occasional failed transactions visible on the explorer are part of controlled testing for “negative cases”, deliberately checking how the system behaves under invalid or unexpected inputs.
- A release candidate for Rusk is being finalized, incorporating feature updates required by DuskEVM. This release will first be rolled out to DuskDS testnet next week.
- On bridge progress, Hein confirmed both deposit and withdrawal flows are now functional and integrated into the frontend. Withdrawals required additional work since DuskEVM doesn’t natively recognize Dusk addresses, but the team implemented a new mechanism that avoids modifying the Optimism codebase while keeping full compatibility.
- We’ve also been making progress on Hedger, Dusk’s confidential transaction engine for the EVM, hinting that more updates and possibly a demo will follow once the testnet is live.
Q2: What are the next plans for the Web Wallet, and is a browser extension planned?
- Early DuskDS dev was tough. As part of DuskEVM, the team introduced a data driver that cleanly translates data between the network and web environments via the Web Wallet. It’s been packaged with friendly wrappers that feel like familiar dev tools, lowering the barrier to build.
- One remaining gap is arbitrary transaction signing for any contract. Today, devs either build their dApp inside the Web Wallet or pipe through it from an external app. Solving this is a priority area; once addressed, DuskDS contract dev becomes competitive with Ethereum/Solana (clean Rust contracts, good tooling).
- Practically, once DuskEVM is live, MetaMask and standard EVM tools work out of the box, so an extension isn’t necessary in the near term.
- A browser extension is not on the roadmap right now. The roadmap is focused on DuskEVM and native issuance flow, but it is something we’re interested in pursuing in the future. One option was using a MetaMask Snap for DuskDS.
Q3: A recent X post mentioned liquidity pools. Can you clarify what this refers to and how it fits into Dusk’s plans?
- Hein clarified that the tweet wasn’t referring to an existing LP feature but rather a future direction tied to tokenized assets and lending markets.
- The idea is to enable users to borrow stablecoins against tokenized stocks or bonds, essentially unlocking liquidity from on-chain real-world assets. This aligns with Dusk’s vision of building a full vertical of finance where issuance, trading, lending, and yield generation all happen natively on-chain.
- In practice, this means having lending and borrowing markets where natively issued securities can serve as collateral. Each layer of utility (issuance → trading → lending) amplifies network value and liquidity.
- Dusk is also working with a partner that provides a liquidity-pool-based product involving two-sided pools, for example, pairing a money-market fund or ETF with cash. These pools automatically balance exposure between the tokenized asset and stablecoin side while earning yield on trades.
- The structure fits within Dusk’s atomic settlement and delivery-versus-payment guarantees, ensuring finality and regulatory compliance for LP trades.
Q4: With STOX coming closer, what will be Dusk’s main token utilities, and could there be benefits for holders similar to BNB?
- Currently, DUSK serves as the gas token for both DuskEVM and DuskDS. The team is tuning gas parameters to introduce more meaningful network backpressure, ensuring balanced economics without discouraging use.
- Hein mentioned several utility directions under exploration:
- Using part of native issuance or trading fees for DUSK buybacks and burns to reduce supply pressure.
- Redirecting a share of DuskEVM earnings to node operators.
- Potential cashback or discount programs tied to future Dusk ecosystem applications.
- These options are being evaluated.
Q5: Gas fees feel very low, will you make them dynamic (e.g., pegged to EUR) or change how they’re set?
- DuskDS and DuskEVM are extremely fast networks, capable of hundreds of transactions per second even on modest hardware. DuskDS can handle over 200 TPS for privacy transactions, while DuskEVM can already reach around 500 TPS, despite not being fully optimized yet.
- Because blockspace isn’t heavily used, there’s no immediate need for dynamic, demand-based pricing like on Ethereum. Instead, the team plans to raise the baseline minimum gas price to introduce a more balanced cost structure and ensure sustainable network economics.
- Over time, the baseline can be adjusted depending on DUSK’s price and network activity through configuration updates.
Q6: Will Quantoz stablecoins be minted on DuskEVM or also on DuskDS?
- Quantoz stablecoins will be minted on DuskEVM, not on DuskDS.
- The team will work with a bridge provider to bring USDT and USDC into the Dusk ecosystem as part of the same setup.
Q7: What’s still left before the public release of the DuskEVM testnet?
- The main dependency is the rollout of the new Rusk version, which includes the latest feature updates needed to support DuskEVM.
- This Rusk release needs to be tested on testnet first to ensure stability.
- In parallel, the team is finalizing the infrastructure setup for both the DuskEVM testnet and mainnet, making sure the network environment is ready to run smoothly once deployed.
Q8: Last year the team said it would move away from NDAs for partnerships, but we still haven’t heard much about them. What happened?
- The NDA restrictions have already been relaxed, but the current silence around partnerships is strategic rather than contractual.
- The goal is to time announcements for maximum impact, ensuring they align closely with the DuskEVM rollout rather than happening too early and losing momentum.
- Announcing partnerships now, while DuskEVM is still in testing, would create a gap, weakening the launch.
- The team is preparing coordinated announcements, co-marketing campaigns, and joint X Spaces with partners once DuskEVM is live, to create a stronger and more sustained wave of visibility.
Q9: Can you share more about STOX development? Is it fully done or still in progress?
- STOX is being built in phases, each with its own deliverables and rollout plan.
- The first phase, which includes the signup page and the initial interface for buying tokenized assets across multiple chains, is already complete.
- This first version will feature asset order routing and start with one launch partner, with more asset providers added over time.
- The initial launch will focus on buying and redeeming tokenized assets, powered by Dusk’s own tokenization engine, in a format similar to platforms like Ondo.
- A more comprehensive trading layer and liquidity provisioning will come in subsequent updates once the base system is live.
Q10: When can we expect the DuskEVM public testnet to launch?
- The DuskDS testnet upgrade is scheduled for next week, marking the one of the prerequisites before DuskEVM can go live.
- The DuskEVM testnet launch depends on two key conditions:
- The successful rollout of the DuskDS upgrade.
- All items on the internal testing checklist turning green, including several edge-case validations.
- Once these are complete and stable, the team will give the green light for public release.
- While there’s no fixed date, this is purely conditional, meaning the launch will happen as soon as those checks pass, without further surprises or delays.
- The team emphasized that this isn’t a simple deployment but a full network upgrade with change management, requiring careful validation.
Watch the full recording here: https://youtu.be/c_gmw1ApQ9Y
Have more questions? Drop them below and we’ll include them in a future session.
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