FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

General - About Dusk Network

  • What is Dusk Network?

Dusk Network is a layer-1 blockchain protocol capable of powering privacy-preserving smart contracts that satisfy business compliance criteria. The network is secured by the Succinct Attestation, a novel and fast Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus with settlement finality guarantees, an important requirement for financial use cases. This opens up new opportunities for communities and organizations who are looking to embrace blockchain for their business and use it to address the inefficiencies of traditional finance. 

  • Is it a permissioned ledger?

No. Dusk Network aims to be an open source, public and permissionless ledger. Blockchain should be available to companies of any size, enabling businesses and consumers to reap the benefits of a public network for an array of financial applications compliant with legal requirements.

  • Is it a platform?

Similar to Ethereum, Dusk Network is a layer-1 blockchain platform. Developers can use the privacy-oriented Dusk Network to deploy financial applications with the peace of mind that user- and transaction-related data remain private and anonymous.

  • What is the story behind Dusk Network?

Early 2018, tech experts Emanuele Francioni and Fulvio Venturelli joined forces with business experts Jelle Pol, Pascal Putman and Mels Dees to create the Dusk Network privacy infrastructure. Headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the team quickly expanded with renowned developers and industry talents, as they embarked on their mission to revolutionize traditional financial markets with the power of blockchain. More on Dusk Network history in the ‘about us’-section of the website here.

  • What's the target audience?

Businesses are the intended end user of Dusk Network solutions. Dusk Network aims to address the many regulatory requirements posed by financial markets. In general, (large) financial service providers, financial institutions, tokenization platforms, and consultancy and legal boutiques have a need for privacy-preserving blockchain technology. Some of the use cases include confidential security tokens, digitization of share registries, and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications. Read more about Dusk Network’s use cases here.

  • How do you generate revenue?

Dusk Network is a layer-1 protocol that can be used by any party looking to capture its benefits. A small percentage of block rewards goes to a long-term development fund with the aim of providing a recurring budget for technical development and maintenance. Block rewards and transaction fees incentivize the nodes to keep the network secure. As you can see in our latest Biannual Report, we have secured a multi-year runway, and with it, we are able to deliver a privacy-respecting blockchain for enterprise-grade solutions, and much more. Going forward, many new revenue-generating business models can materialize. What this will be, exactly, depends on a number of variables, including: the general state of blockchain adoption in the world, the competitive edge versus other blockchain solutions, changes in the regulatory landscape, partner integration fees, the need for custom applications built on Dusk Network and more.

  • Do we have a company culture?

Yes, we do. We believe that it's important for everyone to share the same set of values that characterizes Dusk Network as a company. The shared ethos at Dusk Network includes our belief in transparency and a hunger to challenge each other. Read more about Dusk Culture here.

  • Can I work at Dusk Network?

We post open vacancies on the job page. Even if we are not advertising for it, we welcome spontaneous applications for the position that you desire. Take me to the job page.

Governance

  • How are Nodes incentivized to participate?

Nodes play an important role in the network’s consensus algorithm. Prospective node runners can become Provisioners by staking their DUSK tokens and thereafter earn DUSK through a combination of block rewards and gas fees. For the exact details, we recommend reading our Economic Model Paper: Insights & Highlights document. 

  • Can I run a Dusk Network node?

Yes, you can join the waitlist to run a node on the Dusk Network testnet DayBreak. Simply follow the steps as noted in our How To Sign Up For Testnet article. Additional information can also be found in our dedicated Staking Portal.

  • How much DUSK would I need to set up a node?

Staking requires users to lock in DUSK. Provisioners are expected to lock a minimum of 1,000 DUSK for participation, with no staking ceiling present for those who want to exceed this number. This minimum commitment ensures that the network’s nodes are reliable.

Technology

Framework

  • Where can I find an overview of all the tech components?

The Dusk Network layer-1 blockchain protocol consists of many interconnected parts that can be quite difficult to understand on their own. PLONK, Phoenix, Kadcast, Kelvin, Zedger, are just a few of the cornerstone components of Dusk Network. Interested to get an overview of how it all works together? Explore our explanation of the technical framework in this article.

Confidential Smart Contracts

  • What is a confidential smart contract?

A confidential smart contract is an agreement between multiple parties expressed in code. Smart contracts are executed by the blockchain and help verify, facilitate and record transactions. These transactions are private and irreversible. The 'XSC' confidential smart contracts guarantee strict data privacy and enable companies of any size to use public blockchain technology.

  • What is a ‘XSC’ confidential security contract?

A confidential security contract, or ‘XSC’, is a confidential smart contract specifically designed for the issuance of security tokens. It is a customizable framework for implementation of the right set of privacy and obligations (think whitelisting, voting, or dividend payments). This is extremely helpful for organizations seeking to issue tokens, as these contracts do not have to be created from scratch. The improved standard (XSC 2.0) ships with a more granular control of contract governance, inter-contract interaction functionality (including whitelisting contracts), and a revised dividend payout methodology.

  • What are permissioned tokens?

Permissioned tokens are created on Dusk Network with the security token standard (XSC 2.0) and bring a superior level of control to management of issuing companies. As opposed to non-permissioned tokens, issuers can adhere to regulations, for example to add whitelists of individuals approved for holding and trading of the token.

  • What can you do with Zero Knowledge Smart Contracts?

Dusk Network is the first blockchain with native confidential smart contracts that run on a Virtual Machine. The Confidential Smart Contract platform RUSK opens up development of a new breed of powerful decentralized applications (dApps) and enables anyone to program privacy-enabled smart contracts. This sets Dusk Network aside from existing privacy blockchains such as Monero and Zcash, which can only cater private transactions due to the lack of smart contract functionality.

    Consensus Mechanism

    • Why Succinct Attestation (SA)?

    The two most used consensus algorithms face severe drawbacks. Proof of Work (PoW) is energy inefficient and leads to miner centralization, whereas Proof of Stake (PoS) also favors centralization on the basis of larger stakes. For these reasons, we deemed them both inappropriate for our purpose and created a novel and superior alternative: Succinct Attestation (SA).

    • How does Succinct Attestation (SA) work?

    Succinct Attestation is a unique Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism that delivers much-needed settlement finality. This is essential for regulatory compliance in financial applications. On Dusk Network, completed transactions are final and irreversible as soon as they are processed, providing legal certainty of ownership. In addition, PoS is more environmentally friendly than Proof-of-Work, as it doesn’t rely on the power-intensive computation of mining.

    • What are Provisioners?

    Provisioners have to stake DUSK in order to be eligible to participate in the Provisioner Committee and to be selected as Block Generator for any given round. As long as their stake is active - and their full-node is connected with the internet and running - they are participating in the consensus rounds. The Provisioner Committees are tasked with validating, voting, and re-propagating the candidate block that should be added to the chain. The Block Generator proposes its block to the Provisioner Committees in a multi-step process, which, if successful, results in accepting such a block into the blockchain.

    Privacy

    • How is it possible to create a privacy-respecting blockchain with smart contracts?

    Simple, we have zero-knowledge technology everywhere. From a technical point of view, we are implementing zero-knowledge cryptography in all of Dusk’s core processes to guarantee strict data privacy, a requirement for the compliant issuance of security tokens and other financial applications. And when we say all of Dusk’s core processes, we mean it. Phoenix uses ZK to guarantee strict data privacy, even for non-obfuscated outputs such as block rewards and gas fee refunds, and RUSK VM uses ZK to achieve zero-knowledge smart contracts. Dusk Network is the world’s first layer-1 protocol with native confidential smart contracts. Read more on the privacy-respecting components here.

    • Why are we utilizing the zero-knowledge proof system PLONK?

    By utilizing PLONK, the lightning fast standard in zero-knowledge (ZK) technologies, all transactions on Dusk Network benefit from confidentiality. The network acts like a public record with smart contracts that store relevant information in a confidential fashion, thus solving the shortcomings of similar platforms, such as Ethereum, which are incapable of fulfilling the privacy-compliance requirement.

    • What are Plonk gadgets?

    It is important to know that the Dusk-Plonk library is set up in a fashion that makes it as easy as possible for Rust developers to tap into zero-knowledge and use it in their projects. This means that developers do not only have a TurboComposer at their disposal, we have also created additional gadgets that facilitate easy re-usage of built circuits with different values. The TurboComposer provides an intuitive tool to create your own circuits, and use the Plonk library directly as a dependency in your projects.

    Storage

    • How is Kelvin helping us in terms of blockchain storage?

    Kelvin is created by Dusk Network, and has been an indispensable tool for modeling truly blockchain-optimized data-structures that are used by the transaction model and the smart contract engine. Kelvin reduces the overhead caused by database structures that are designed for mutable data (as opposed to the immutable data / append-only data we need for the blockchain use case). Read more on Kelvin here.

    Transactions

    • Why do we have two transaction models, Phoenix and Zedger?

    Phoenix is a novel transaction model that evolves the UTXO model proposed by Zcash and extends the functionality to non-obfuscated outputs. Being the first to tackle privacy-preserving (or confidential) smart contracts, Dusk Network has also been the first to experience the unsuitability of existing transaction models to preserve privacy. Though extremely suitable for privacy, for the case of security tokens we needed some alterations. Which is why we created the hybrid transaction model Zedger. It is the first transaction model with built-in support for trust-less, yet compliant, settlement and redemption of securities transactions. It provides the added functionality we need in security tokens (confidential security contract ‘XSC’). For example, Zedger prevents pre-approved users from owning more than one account, or supports dividend distributions and voting. Read more on the transaction models Phoenix and Zedger here.

    DUSK

    • What is DUSK?

    DUSK is the native token that fuels the network. Businesses use DUSK to pay for network services, such as deploying and running a smart contract, transferring DUSK or XSC based security tokens. For each transaction submitted to the network, DUSK is used to compensate network nodes for bandwidth, verification, and storage. 

    • Where can I buy DUSK?

    Dusk Network is listed by the world's leading cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance. You can find more details on www.coinmarketcap.com.

    • When can I trade my ERC-20 or BEP-2 token for native DUSK?

    A complete token swap will be facilitated once we've reached our mainnet milestone, alongside complete and thorough testing of the network.

    Testnet DayBreak

    • What is testnet DayBreak?

    The public testnet is a significant milestone signaling a period of public feedback and interaction prior to mainnet. With its launch, the network is now open for public scrutiny. Users can visit the Block Explorer to inspect the network's block times, and learn more about the ongoing activities. Those who are looking to contribute can apply for the waiting list, which is currently boasting over 2500 sign ups. Tech-savvy users can install the CLI wallet from the Portal and start executing transactions on the network.

    • When did the testnet DayBreak go live?

    DayBreak's public launch occurred on March 22nd, 2022.

    Testnet DayLight

    • What is testnet DayLight?

    DayLight is the upgraded version of our initial testnet DayBreak. This upgrade brings improvements to the staking contracts, a faster CLI wallet and the Block Explorer UX was improved. You can find all the details here.

    • When did the testnet upgrade DayLight go live?

    DayLight's public launch occurred on July 6th, 2022.