DuskCon: A Pre-Release Beta Launch for Dusk Network

The new conference is a chance for Dusk Network to introduce their new beta release and Privacy as a Force for Good.

Benzinga will be attending as a media partner and covering the livestream.

Dusk Network has made some inroads in tokenization on the platform since December last year. Now the privacy blockchain is reaching out to its supporters, developers, and partners by holding the first annual DuskCon, a virtual event with recorded panel discussions and keynote presentations that cover practical use cases for financial apps on Dusk Network and presents some of the virtues of the network while celebrating its soft launch. 

The show’s theme for its inaugural year is “blockchain technology and privacy as a force for good” -- advancements in the state of blockchain that Dusk Network hopes to make a reality with their new beta release timed to launch along with the conference on Friday, April 9th.

“We felt the need to celebrate with our community, as we will be launching the End-to-End Release Candidate, a technical milestone the company had been working towards for nearly three years. To come this far, we have made very specific choices regarding privacy, like the use of zero-knowledge proof, PLONK, and Rusk. Therefore, DuskCon is the right moment to explain our choices and what it means for partners and future products and services that will be built,” Emanuele Francioni, Founder & Tech Lead for Dusk Network, said.

The Network said in a statement that DuskCon is organized to celebrate Dusk Network’s technological milestones -- what they say will be the world’s first privacy blockchain for RegDeFi applications and is part of a larger expansion plan.

Dusk Network’s dev team has been toiling since 2018 to create a working privacy blockchain capable of housing financial applications. The DuskCon event marks the date where they will release the Release Candidate of the blockchain protocol that will go live later in the year. The release includes various new features, particularly in the zero-knowledge domain.

DuskCon features speakers from Dusk Network to talk about new network features and use cases and partner speakers from ANKR, Harmony, NPEX, ZCash, Aztec Protocol, and LTO who will talk about specific implementations. 

“Attendees will learn what the devs from Dusk Network are so excited about… and get a sneak peek of the new items that will be making it to our ecosystem roadmap, why we opted for certain zero-knowledge technologies, how privacy-compliant technologies will affect future products and services and how our partners use Dusk Network technology,” the company said in a statement. 

Jelle Pol, Business Director for Dusk Network, said that DuskCon is also about demonstrating the larger vision of the functioning network supporting an ecosystem of financial service apps. 

“At DuskCon, we showcase how everything we build ties together into our larger vision, the Dusk Ecosystem. On top of our privacy blockchain, we facilitate others to house financial apps. We already announced a few use cases with our partners, like the digital shareholder registry with LTO, the creation of the TWO utility token, and recently announced our partnerships with ANKR and Harmony. It is the first time where our community, investors, future customers, and international speakers tie together what we have been working on over the past years and our next steps,“ Pol said. 

At the event, Dusk will explain the technological milestones they have achieved, and how they are important for the adoption of financial use cases. As an example, there are changes to the consensus mechanism, now designed in such a way that there is clarity about the exact moment in which a transaction is settled as a requirement for settling financial transactions. The Dusk Network preserves the privacy of transactors of Security Tokens, preventing market manipulation and front-running and upholding General Data Protection regulations.

In March, the Netherlands-based Network jumped into the token financing space, providing the platform for businesses to tokenize various assets to offer to their own customers and companies that want to pursue token financing. Investor Ready News, a business accelerator, used Dusk Network to fight the economic effects of the COVID-19 outbreak by allowing businesses, particularly small and mid-sized businesses that were hardest hit in the Netherlands, to more easily tokenize their assets.

In December 2020, Dusk Network acquired “around 10%” of shares in Nederlandsche Participatie Exchange (NPEX) following a partnership period where both companies tested pilot projects for financial product innovation, including wider scale tokenization. 

More news to come…

Dusk’s subscriber base will be sent a link to the virtual event along with more than 500 new registrants. The DuskCon Livestream starts Friday, April 9th at 3 PM CET.

It’s free to register on the site, and since the event is virtual, seats are still available. In fact, you can sign up for a chance to win show swag in case the pandemic has taken that small joy out of your life. 

DuskCon invites attendees to share thoughts and questions on Twitter using #DuskCon. There will be rewards for the most active accounts and questions from the audience answered.

Beyond announcing the launch of New Release, Dusk Network has hinted at some major announcements to happen on the day of the show. Any news about live apps would certainly help keep the momentum of excitement over the launch.