2020 | From Start To Finish
2020 has been a remarkable and unprecedented year for the world, and we’re sure most of us are ready for the new year to start. For Dusk Network, however, it’s been one hell of a ride, with many remarkable heights reached and very few lows encountered. Except, perhaps, our temporarily empty Amsterdam HQ; the inevitable result of a full project team working remotely.
The global COVID pandemic has tremendously shifted the way people work and live, both in temporary and permanent ways. This shift has also affected the financial market, and there’s little doubt that the influx of traditionals entering the cryptocurrency market this year is partially driven by a post-COVID vision of the market. During all this, Dusk Network hasn’t wasted a minute. The past year has been incredibly fruitful for the project, with a host of pivotal commercial partners, investments, and transparency-focused documentation released to the public.
Let’s take a look and revisit the year 2020, quarter by quarter.
Q1
Welcoming new team members & partners
Besides delivering on major technological updates and enhancements, Dusk Network’s most visible achievements have been in Business Development. Throughout the year, we’ve been publishing articles detailing partnerships and providing transparency in regards to our company strategies.
In February, we started off with a bang: announcing the year’s first public partnership with Firm24 & LTO Network. Together, we began development of a digital shareholder registry for the Benelux region.
The subsequent month, we expanded our marketing team. And when COVID-19 hit Europe, we were glad to report that our work would continue unabated. In addition, we also elaborated on our milestones and dynamic development roadmap and began to publish demos regularly as a continuous activity.
Q2
Dusk Network use cases in the spotlight
April saw the release of our first Business Report, which provided context and insights into on-going developments, as well as Dusk Network’s financial position. Transparency and trust are the foundational pillars of our mission, which is why the in-depth nature of this report (and the report to follow in Q4) was a natural progression of our values.
Technology needs usage. In May, we updated our website with a page on the many use cases of Dusk Network technology, particularly elaborating on those use cases already in existence.
Mid-June saw another pivotal announcement: the creation of the TWO Utility Token, in collaboration with the 2Tokens Foundation. The TWO Utility Token project is one of our efforts focused on educating the Dutch tokenization industry. Through this use case, we encourage entrepreneurs to experience the relative simplicity of creating a functional utility token, and to invest in the new opportunities this creates.
The 2Tokens collaboration also provided Dusk Network with a new venue of influence. We gained a seat at the table with De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) to advise on the specifications and framework for a Central Bank Digital Currency.
Q3
Community staking & major iFinex investment
Another huge milestone has been the launch of our staking campaigns in August. Kicking off with Block Generator staking, which quickly filled with 300+ Block Generators. To celebrate the staking campaigns, we were invited to join a Binance AMA and organised a Trading Competition.
Shortly after we launched Provisioner Staking. All in all, we reached the incredible milestone of a combined 40M+ Dusk tokens locked.
Also, we became a member of the InterWork Alliance to share knowledge and experiences with other players in the tokenization field. IWA focuses on the creation of frameworks, so it also meets up with compliance standards.
Besides our Monthly Development updates, we focused on sharing our Zero-Knowledge Proof experience by sharing insights on Hackernoon. With the compendium, we hope to inspire other developers to use the technology, as this is what makes our Dusk Network blockchain technology uniquely privacy proof.
September started strong with the wonderful news of iFinex investing more than $1M for the creation of Dusk Network’s Security Token Exchange project, Dawn. In the midst of the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) hype, we shared our vision on the financial ecosystem of the future, with decentralized exchanges potentially being a revolutionary ingredient. For another 2Tokens Foundation use case, Next Generation Capital, Dusk Network was chosen as the technical partner involved in the creation of the project, focusing on alternative finance.
You can imagine that there's a lot of stuff that needs to happen in order to launch a decentralized ecosystem for the financial markets. It's not simply a case of 'build the tech and the people will come'. We need to do change management with the businesses and people we work with, ensuring governments, regulators, etc. are all up to date on this new innovative mindset.
Because we are building a secure infrastructure for tokenized securities, we can leave nothing to chance. Of course, this means rigorous testing and auditing of the technology but also, like I said above, getting the users ready to adopt tokenization in their day-to-day lives. We still focus on the development of our technology, while also exploring partnership options and broader use cases. This is part of the long term ambition we all share to make a difference in the current financial landscape. As many of you know, we work Open Source and all our technical progress can always be followed on our GitHub. We invite you to do so and are always open to feedback, suggestions, and expertise!
Q4
Tokenomics revealed & the foundations for a promising 2021
In October, we shared our Economic Model Paper, the blueprint for a healthy token economy. In it, we answer such questions as how network participants are incentivized, how businesses use DUSK, and how we preserve the security of the protocol. As these topics can become quite technical, we’ve also released our Insights & Highlights supplementary document. This document provides additional exposition and context to the data found in the Economic Model Paper, and allows for a proper understanding of the dynamics of our tokenomics.
In that same month, The 2Tokens Foundation organised an online event inviting industry experts to join the discussion on the topic of tokenization in Europe and its opportunities. As tokenization technology advocates, we gladly seized this opportunity to share our knowledge with the banks, ministries, SMEs, and institutions present, explaining the operation and possible consequences of the recent MiCA regulations.
Due to safety concerns, it was decided earlier in the year that the Dusk Network team would be working remotely. At the time of our second Business Report’s release in November, we’d fully acclimated to our new work environments. The comprehensive report noted what developments our teams had been working on and detailed how we’d secured a healthy financial runway all the way to 2023. With that timeline in mind, we also shared an in-depth vision of Dawn, the digital EU securities market. For us, ‘what we are doing now’ and ‘where we will be’ are completely interlinked.
Now, with the end of 2020 in sight, we end the year with a bang: on the first day of December, we announced Dusk Network becoming a shareholder in Dutch Stock Exchange NPEX. We are not only shareholders, however. We’ve been working together as commercial partners behind the scenes for quite some time, realizing pilot deals. The stake in NPEX is a strategic move, as they are eligible to work as a stock exchange with the appropriate permissions and licenses (MTF license under MiFID II) to operate in Europe. Naturally, we celebrated the news again with a successful AMA hosted by CryptoBenelux and a Trading Competition through Binance.
How does Dusk Network set out to solve the issues in the current financial market, and what trends & challenges are we seeing that others overlook? Our Business Director Jelle Pol has begun publishing his thoughts and insights into the industry, with a brand new series of articles. The first two of which have already been released: From Dusk Till Dawn & Five Key Signals Indicating an Ecosystem Approach Will Win The SME Market.
2021: Building On Our Foundation
For Dusk Network, the efforts made in 2020 built the foundation we need to fulfill our ambitions for 2021. Before we enter the new year, we’d like to thank you all very much for supporting us as we create a new, better financial ecosystem in a post-COVID market. We’re certain you’ll appreciate the many upcoming developments for the project and our vision.
Warmest,
Team Dusk Network
Notable Milestones of 2020
- Business Lead Jelle Pol educates about Dusk Network in our new business series
- Dusk Network becomes shareholder NPEX stock exchange
- Tech Lead Emanuele Francioni explains Dusk Network's technology in our technical series
- Release of two Biannual Reports detailing our progress as we build the privacy blockchain of the future
- Release of Dusk Network Economic Model Paper
- The launch of our Block Generator Staking and subsequent Provisioner Staking
- NextGen Capital selects Dusk Network for Vertical Funding
- iFinex inc. invests in Dusk Network’s Security Token Exchange project
- Dusk and zero-knowledge proofs: A Hackernoon compendium
- Dusk Network joins InterWork Alliance
- Dusk Network deploys world-first ZK Utility Token for Dutch ecosystem
- Gate.io, WazirX, and Deversifi list Dusk Network
- Firm24 to tokenize thousands of SMEs on Dusk Network
- Twelve Monthly Dev updates and Monthly doses of Dusk have been shared with our community