The dilemma of enterprise-level blockchain is becoming increasingly apparent.

Take Hedera as an example. Its council background is solid (tech giants like Google, IBM, Boeing backing it), and its technical indicators are also good—Hashgraph consensus is indeed fast, with high TPS and low transaction fees, attracting institutional interest. But the problem lies in privacy. The on-chain data transparency feature is a big headache for financial institutions. Who is willing to expose transaction details of real money on a public chain? Dark pools, sensitive collaborations, large positions—once these are on-chain, they are permanently accessible. Plus, Hedera’s council structure inherently carries a centralized flavor, making institutions’ concerns significant.

Compare this with another approach. DUSK never intended to compete with enterprise alliances from the start; instead, it focuses on decentralized privacy and protocol compliance as its core. There are several key moves in its tech stack: Hedger enables true encryption for dark pool transactions; the selective disclosure mechanism leaves verification doors open for regulators, allowing users to confidently hide their cards while compliance parties can verify with a single click. NPEX, as a tokenized exchange, currently has a scale close to €230 million and holds an MTF license. Chainlink’s Data Streams provide low-latency price feeds, and CCIP cross-chain solutions are also functioning seamlessly.

The differences are also evident in yields. Hedera’s staking annualized return remains stable at around 6-8%, but honestly, this figure is a bit low. DUSK can reach an annualized return of 13.8%. While this isn’t a straightforward comparison (project stage and risk differences must be considered), it is indeed more attractive. Its price hovers around 0.064, with a relatively small market cap, which indicates it hasn’t been widely hyped yet and may have room for growth.

In terms of strategic direction, Hedera bets on council endorsement plus enterprise payments, while DUSK focuses on the European MiCA regulatory framework and licensed exchanges. The former has more obvious centralization features (the council controls nodes), whereas the latter uses PoS and Byzantine fault tolerance mechanisms to decentralize power. Which approach will be more practical depends on how strong the actual needs for privacy and compliance are among institutions.