Blockchain industry regulatory advocacy in US and EU

Blockchain organizations are actively seeking regulatory clarity regarding the classification of digital assets in the United States and the European Union. The Cardano Foundation has advocated to the European Commission for refining existing Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) rules to distinguish between decentralized network participation and traditional intermediary services, opposing new frameworks for decentralized finance and staking.

In the United States, a coalition including the Cardano Foundation, Chainlink Labs, Stellar Development Foundation, Hedera, Aptos Labs, and Ava Labs has submitted a joint comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The group is urging the SEC to explicitly codify the status of digital commodities as non-securities within the formal text of the proposed ‘Regulation Crypto Assets’. The organizations argue that current mentions of these classifications in preambles rather than legal provisions create legal uncertainty for developers and custodians. Their demands include formalizing regulatory definitions, clarifying securities law application to secondary markets, addressing safe harbor risks, and maintaining jurisdictional boundaries between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).