Ethereum's upgrade roadmap is heating up, but it cannot overshadow another "national-level" technological competition—the race for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Among them, blockchain projects like Dusk are quietly becoming the focus of attention by central banks around the world.

Simply put, the challenge CBDCs need to solve is not just about transferring funds. The core pain points are: ordinary people need privacy protection, regulatory authorities require transparent audit capabilities, and the entire system must comply with international anti-terrorism financing standards. Dusk has been modeling this set of problems since 2018. Its modular design is like building blocks, allowing central banks to quickly assemble the digital currency framework they need: transactions among the public have privacy barriers, but the flow of funds is transparent and traceable to regulators.

Although the voice is not loud now, imagine this: by 2026, when a European country promotes a cross-border digital euro pilot, Dusk might appear in the technical solution. Seems far away? Actually, its privacy smart contracts are already capable of solving the most challenging issues in cross-border payments—protecting the business secrets of participants while meeting anti-terrorism financing compliance requirements.

For Dusk, once it becomes a key underlying technology in national-level CBDC projects, the token economy could be linked to the circulation scale of sovereign currencies. By then, while others are still debating Layer 2 gas costs, it might already be part of the underlying code of the global monetary system—a kind of "invisible infrastructure."