Can the upcoming public testnet launch provide a boost?

Dusk Network is a privacy-orientated blockchain and distributed ledger protocol (DLT) aimed at providing programmability and auditability for financial applications. As a Layer-1 blockchain that supports confidential smart contracts, Dusk Network offers infrastructure that businesses can use to tokenise financial instruments and automate costly processes. 

Central to its design is a scalable and public blockchain, direct settlement finality of transactions, data privacy, as well as the Confidential Security Contract (XSC) standard, a de facto standard for security token issuance.

Dusk Network coin reached an all-time-high of $1.0324 on 16 January. Can the bull run continue despite a wider cryptocurrency market slump, and what factors are shaping Dusk Network price prediction?

What is the DUSK coin?

What does the Dusk Network do? Well, a key element of the project is its distributed financial market infrastructure (dFMI), which provides near-instant final settlement of transactions. 

Dusk Network has established a more performant consensus than proof-of-stake (PoS) called proof-of-blind bid. This mechanism preserves privacy on the network and directly settles transactions within 15 seconds. 

Dusk Network also acts as a blockchain protocol for the deployment of programmable zero-knowledge smart contracts, thus facilitating a privacy-orientated decentralised application (dApp) ecosystem.

Organisations can use Dusk Network to issue tokens governed by privacy-preserving smart contracts. The project has its own native coin known as DUSK. 

Importantly, the Dusk Network protocol is built to preserve privacy when transacting with DUSK. It’s split into two layers: a native protocol asset and a general compute layer. 

DUSK, a BEP-20 and ERC-20-compatible coin, can be used in any or all of the following ways:

• utilised for staking 

• exchanged for Confidential Security Standard (XSC) based tokens in both one way and atomic exchanges

• utilised for on-chain governance within XSC

• block rewards are paid to consensus participants through a DUSK-defined protocol

• used to deploy various dApps

The XSC standard is crucial to Dusk Network. It was created to enable seamless interaction between non-regulated and regulated assets within the protocol. This means that the project can act as a privacy-preserving sidechain for any other existing Layer-1 protocol through a series of interoperability solutions. 

DUSK price analysis: Technical view

The Dusk coin started its journey in July 2019. The price climbed to $0.4299 on 19 March 2021. It had been trading at $0.2881 on 13 March. 

That same month, Dusk Network partnered with Harmony, the blockchain platform designed to facilitate the creation and use of dApps, as well as with Ankr, the Web 3.0 infrastructure and cross-chain staking decentralised finance (DeFi) platform. In light of the positive news, DUSK continued to trade within the $0.3 to $0.4 range throughout March 2021. 

The rally was short-lived. The trend reversed when the price dropped to $0.2686 on 27 April 2021. This was despite an announcement made the day prior about an integration with Chainlink that would see Dusk Network using price feed data from Chainlink’s oracle network to create a cross-bridge chain. 

DUSK then consolidated, trading within the $0.11 to $0.19 range until 14 November 2021, when it jumped to $0.3484. 

DUSK hit $0.9784 on 29 December. After a dip to $0.6019 on 10 January 2022, the coin rallied, reaching an all-time-high of $1.0324 on 16 January 2022. 

The DUSK price action moved lower on 21 January 2022, bottoming out at $0.5428 on 22 January 2022. It’s currently (27 January) trading at around $0.637445, and ranks 160th in the list of cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation at $248m, according to CoinMarketCap.

Technical analysis provided by CoinCodex showed that short-term sentiment on DUSK was bullish, as of 27 January, with twenty one indicators displaying a bullish signal compared to 7 bearish signals. 

The daily simple and exponential moving averages were giving mostly ‘sell’ signals, while the relative strength index (RSI) stood at 45, as of 27 January. An RSI reading of 30 or below indicates an oversold or undervalued condition, while a reading above 70 would suggest the asset is becoming overvalued or overbought.

Cutting-edge technology

A major plus for the project is that Dusk Network relies on a public and open source DLT, meaning that any business can access privacy-preserving blockchain infrastructure for global collaboration at scale. Also, its native token, DUSK, is versatile and can be used to initiate transactions, atomic swap and deploy smart contracts. 

Dusk Network also uses zero-knowledge cryptography and advanced encryption methods. It empowers businesses to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and financial market directives. 

More specifically, Dusk Network was primarily conceived with a focus on regulatory compliant security tokenisation. 

What’s more, its protocol deploys a unique consensus algorithm known as segregated byzantine agreement (SBA) which provides near-instant transactional finality with a negligible probability of a fork. Due to the SBA protocol, a minimal amount of computational power is required during a transaction, as it combines existing ideas such as cryptographic sortition and stealth time-locked transactions.

In other DUSK coin news, the project is set to launch its public testnet on 1 February. It will be implementing releases every two weeks. This will include bug fixes as well as new features. The network, which will be known as Daybreak, is set to include blockchain protocol infrastructure and user-facing components such as a web wallet and Block Explorer. 

“2022 is a transformative year for Dusk Network, especially with the upcoming launch of Daybreak on 1 Feburary 2022,” Emanuele Francioni, Dusk Network’s founder, told Capital.com. 

“By building a Layer-1 privacy blockchain for financial applications we aim to radically change the existing financial system.

“By building a Layer-1 privacy blockchain for financial applications we aim to radically change the existing financial system. We also have strategic partnerships with leading blockchain projects such as Ankr, Chainlink, Elrond, Harmony and others in order to provide efficient privacy-oriented applications to businesses across the world.”

A risk for the project lies in the fact that it is still in development as Dusk Network has stated that it is currently resolving issues such as the back-end functionality of the upcoming web wallet.  

Dusk coin price prediction: Buy, sell or hold?

In terms of a DUSK crypto price prediction, algorithm-based forecasting service Wallet Investor gave a positive outlook. Based on historical data, Wallet Investor estimated the price rising to $0.549 by February 2022, $1.153 in January 2023 and $2.225 by January 2025.

DigitalCoin Price supported the bullish  DUSK/USD forecast, expecting the token to rise to $0.82184091521 in February 2022, $0.93405522067 in 2023, $1.23 in January 2025 and $2.49 in January 2028.

While the Dusk Network prediction for 2030 is not yet available, DigitalCoinPrice suggested it could be $2.67 in December 2029.

“Dusk Network is a blockchain for programmable and confidential securities that is focused on privacy through a Confidential Security Contract (XSC) standard. I consider DUSK’s highest recent point to be on 16 January 2022 when it reached $1.0324 in value,” Milko Trajcevski, a financial analyst at Invezz, told Capital.com.

“Considering that it is launching a public testnet next month, I predict that DUSK could reach $1 again by the end of February 2022.”

Note that predictions can be wrong. Forecasts shouldn’t be used as a substitute for your own research. Always conduct your own due diligence before investing. And never invest or trade money you cannot afford to lose.

FAQs

Read more:

The difference between trading assets and CFDs
The main difference between CFD trading and trading assets, such as commodities and stocks, is that you don’t own the underlying asset when you trade on a CFD.
You can still benefit if the market moves in your favour, or make a loss if it moves against you. However, with traditional trading you enter a contract to exchange the legal ownership of the individual shares or the commodities for money, and you own this until you sell it again.
CFDs are leveraged products, which means that you only need to deposit a percentage of the full value of the CFD trade in order to open a position. But with traditional trading, you buy the assets for the full amount. In the UK, there is no stamp duty on CFD trading, but there is when you buy stocks, for example.
CFDs attract overnight costs to hold the trades (unless you use 1-1 leverage), which makes them more suited to short-term trading opportunities. Stocks and commodities are more normally bought and held for longer. You might also pay a broker commission or fees when buying and selling assets direct and you’d need somewhere to store them safely.

Capital Com is an execution-only service provider. The material provided on this website is for information purposes only and should not be understood as an investment advice. Any opinion that may be provided on this page does not constitute a recommendation by Capital Com or its agents. We do not make any representations or warranty on the accuracy or completeness of the information that is provided on this page. If you rely on the information on this page then you do so entirely on your own risk.