Magitek92

Yesterday we hosted an X Space with @HeinDauven (CTO) and @Neotamandua (Head of Product) to walk the community through what the team has been working on over the past few weeks. Here's a summary of the key updates, improvements, and what's ahead.
Recent Releases
The past few weeks have been incredibly productive. Here's what went live:
Hedger Alpha on DuskEVM Testnet. Our privacy module for EVM is now live on testnet, showcasing how confidential transactions work on DuskEVM with a new and improved UI/UX and transaction flow.
DUSK/USDC Pool on Uniswap V4. With USDT delisted from European exchanges under MiCA, EU users lost access to most USDT trading pairs. We deployed a $300K DUSK/USDC pool on Ethereum to provide a direct, MiCA-compliant trading route. Trading activity has been growing, and community members can also provide liquidity in the pair.
Automated Bridge Upgrade. The bridge infrastructure received a full overhaul. It's now faster, fully automated, and more reliable. The upgrade also included a complete refresh of all JavaScript dependencies to harden infrastructure. A detailed post-mortem on the earlier bridge incident will be published separately.
Documentation Overhaul. The docs received a major revamp: cleaner layout, improved content hierarchy, simplified language, and updated guides. We used the opportunity to cut the fluff and make everything easier to understand.
Rusk v1.5 Upgrade. This included multiple improvements, a new GraphQL endpoint fully adherent to GraphQL specifications, a critical security fix, and the move from Rust nightly to stable. More on that below.
Codebase and Developer Infrastructure Improvements
A significant amount of work has gone into improving the developer experience and reducing technical debt across the entire stack. These changes may be less visible to end users, but they accelerate everything going forward.
Rust Nightly to Stable. When Dusk was originally built, it required bleeding-edge Rust features that only existed in nightly builds. Those features have since been stabilized, and the entire codebase has now moved to Rust stable with the 2024 edition. This makes it significantly easier to stay up to date, reduces tooling issues, and gives external developers more flexibility when building against DuskDS.
Monorepo Split. The main Rusk repository has been restructured. User-facing components like the Web Wallet, Explorer and Genesis contracts have been extracted into their own repositories. This makes it easier for community developers to contribute, file issues against specific products, and onboard without needing to understand the full contract and WebAssembly compilation pipeline. Rust developers working on the core protocol no longer have to deal with the complexity of the Genesis contracts and their different compilation paths.
Dusk Forge. A new tool that has been applied across our own Dusk contracts, standardizing common patterns and eliminating thousands of lines of redundant code. For DuskEVM contracts on the L1 alone, there are around 15 contracts all using Forge with a shared data driver pattern. Without this standardization, the team estimates they would be maintaining thousands of additional lines of code. Updates to the shared standard now propagate automatically across all contracts.
GraphQL and HTTP Node Improvements. The GraphQL endpoint is now fully specification-compliant, replacing the previous custom payload format. The HTTP API is also being improved with proper status codes and a more ergonomic interface for developers querying blockchain data.
Archive Node and Indexing. Work is underway to expand the archive node to support data indexing in SQL databases. This is critical for developers building dashboards, explorers, or any application that needs to efficiently query historical blockchain data. The new indexing infrastructure will let developers listen to specific on-chain events, filter them, and store them in efficient queryable formats.
CLI Wallet Improvements. The Rusk wallet CLI is getting a UX refresh with a more modern command-line interface, in line with current developer tooling standards.
Security and Hardening
The team's primary focus right now is security and hardening across the entire stack.
Internal Audit. An internal audit of the full stack has been completed. The team is now in the implementation phase, addressing all findings. The work is being maintained in private repositories for security reasons and will be made public once the changes have been rolled out.
External Security Report. Last week, an external security firm reported a vulnerability that coincided with the team's own ongoing security research. This prompted an accelerated Rusk upgrade. There was no risk of fund loss, but it was important enough to act on quickly. A more detailed disclosure will follow once post-remediation checks are complete.
Hardening DuskDS. DuskEVM is built on top of DuskDS as its settlement and data availability layer. Without a hardened DuskDS, DuskEVM's security posture, finality & settlement guarantees are incomplete. The current sprint is focused on strengthening this foundation before the DuskEVM mainnet launch.
Multi-sig and Beyond. The multi-sig contract on DuskDS is one component of the broader security roadmap. Additional improvements have been made to reduce the overall security risk. Some changes will be soft forks, others hard forks.
What's Happening in Parallel
Not everyone on the team is focused on security & hardening of DuskDS. Several other developments are moving forward.
Dusk Trade. We’re using this time to further polish and improve the Dusk Trade platform experience. Significant progress has been made on both technical and legal/compliance tracks.
Cross-Chain Interoperability. Beyond the existing Chainlink CCIP integration, the team has been exploring additional cross-chain routes. Early experimentation with Hyperlane, an open-source messaging protocol, has shown promising results for enabling asset movement between DuskDS and other supported chains. This is still in the exploration phase, but the potential for expanded interoperability is significant.
Business and Legal. Progress is ongoing on the business development and legal side, particularly around partner onboarding and regulatory compliance flows. Partners remain aligned and supportive. Those aware of the security work have expressed confidence in the team's approach of taking the time to do things right. Work continues on both sides, with progress on business and legal tracks running in parallel with the technical hardening.
Team Morale and Velocity
Development velocity has accelerated noticeably since the beginning of 2026. The team addressed long-standing technical debt and tooling bottlenecks that were slowing everything down, and the results are showing in the volume and quality of commits being merged across multiple repositories.
The team structure has been tightened, with more cross-team collaboration and daily standups replacing isolated work silos. Current morale is high, driven by the visible acceleration in output and the impact of recent improvements.
What's Next
Complete the foundational hardening sprint and roll out necessary upgrades.
Once complete, begin the DuskEVM mainnet launch phase.
Continue expanding developer tooling and infrastructure.
More updates to follow. Stay tuned.
Listen to the full conversation here: