Cardano Foundation Pushes EU to Keep MiCA Away From DeFi and Staking
The Cardano Foundation is urging EU regulators not to extend MiCA crypto rules to DeFi and staking, warning of business uncertainty.
The Cardano Foundation formally called on European Union regulators Thursday to resist expanding the Markets in Crypto-Assets framework — known as MiCA — to cover decentralized finance protocols and staking services, arguing the move would stifle innovation and create dangerous legal ambiguity for crypto businesses operating across the bloc.
At the heart of the foundation's argument is a demand that EU policymakers anchor future crypto regulation in actual financial risk rather than in the specific technology underlying a given product or service. The foundation contends that applying blanket rules designed for centralized crypto markets to inherently decentralized systems misunderstands how DeFi and staking fundamentally operate.
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The warning carries real urgency for the industry: overlapping or duplicative regulatory regimes could leave businesses caught between conflicting compliance obligations, the foundation cautioned. That kind of uncertainty, it argued, would push crypto enterprises out of Europe at exactly the moment the EU is trying to position itself as a competitive hub for digital-asset innovation.
MiCA, which represents one of the world's most comprehensive crypto regulatory frameworks, took full effect for asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens in mid-2024, with broader provisions rolling out across the EU. Whether and how regulators choose to extend its scope to DeFi and staking is shaping up to be one of the most consequential policy debates in European crypto governance over the next several years.
The Cardano Foundation's intervention signals that industry stakeholders are mobilizing early to shape that debate before legislative momentum builds. Continue reading at Cointelegraph.
