Cardano Foundation Urges EU Not to Expand MiCA Over DeFi and Staking

The Cardano Foundation has requested that the European Union avoid establishing new, standalone regulatory frameworks for decentralized finance and staking, according to an outline of its 19-page submission to the European Commission published on Oct. 21 ¹. The organization argued that existing financial statutes should oversee these operations by evaluating their underlying functions and risks rather than the software used to deliver them ¹.

In the Sept. 30 submission, the group emphasized that authorities must separate direct, non-custodial user involvement in decentralized systems from intermediary services that custody or manage consumer assets ¹. On the Cardano network, holders of $ADA can delegate tokens to help secure the ledger without locking assets or relinquishing custody ¹. The foundation maintained that this decentralized participation requires different regulatory consideration than custodial services managed by third parties ¹. At the time of writing, $ADA traded at $0.2291.

Pushing Back on Overlapping Regimes

The foundation warned that redundant obligations between the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation and established EU financial frameworks risk generating jurisdictional friction and divergent enforcement across member states ¹. The remarks respond directly to escalating scrutiny from European watchdogs; in September, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) proposed bringing DeFi access, staking, and lending under MiCA via new regulated service designations and distinct investor safeguards ¹.

The policy push in Brussels coincides with transatlantic lobbying efforts by the group ¹. On Oct. 20, the Cardano Foundation partnered with five other blockchain entities in an open letter calling on the US Securities and Exchange Commission to formally classify digital commodities as non-securities under its emerging policy framework ¹.