Having been in the crypto space for over five years, I've stepped on enough pits to write a blood and tears story. Especially in the privacy coin sector, I haven't really won much.

I still remember a project that claimed to achieve ultimate privacy. When I bought in, the community was shouting loudly, saying transactions were trace-free and on-chain searches couldn't find anything. But once I actually used it, I realized what reality was—small transfers took half a day, and once I urgently needed to exchange U, it was stuck for two days before it finally arrived. In the end, I watched the coin's price halve, losing nearly half of my investment before I finally sold. After that, I became wary of all coins claiming to be privacy-focused. I always felt these projects are either just hype for concepts or testing the boundaries of regulation—inevitably crashing, not worth the effort to research.

The first time I saw Dusk, I glanced at the introduction and moved on. I thought, here we go again? Promoting financial privacy? Isn't finance supposed to be transparent and compliant to go far? Privacy and compliance are two parallel lines—how could they be combined? It must be just a pie-in-the-sky promise to scam investors.

At that time, the privacy coin sector was booming, and I casually bought a few hundred DUSK tokens, just threw them into my wallet and didn't bother anymore. I wasn't investing much, so if it went up, I could make some pocket money; if it went down, it wouldn't hurt much. I didn't even bother to read the white paper or check out the ecosystem page.

I left it like that for half a year. Until last year, I helped my brother solve his cross-...