Key Takeaways:
- The Cardano Foundation advocated against the EU coming up with new rules for DeFi, staking, lending, or protocol-level crypto activities.
- The group is not interested in the regulation of blockchain, but the regulation based on the economic function, control and risk.
- Cardano further urged for more clearly defined MiCA borders, greater uniformity across the EU, and reduced legal overlaps of current financial regulations.
The Cardano Foundation is urging European regulators to keep MiCA narrowly scoped and prevent overly broad classification of all decentralized crypto-related activities as separately regulated services.
In its response to the European Commission’s MiCA review, the Foundation argued that more regulation would not automatically make Europe’s crypto market safer or more competitive.
Cardano Opposes New MiCA Rules for DeFi and Staking
The Foundation’s submission was made to the Commission on September 30, 2026 and was targeted at topics that are pertinent to public and permissionless blockchains. The simplistic message of its position is that regulation must focus on what the activity is, who is controlling the activity, and what are the risks presented by the activity.
That means that DeFi, staking, lending, and more blockchain-based activities should not be subjected to new regulations simply because they run on decentralized infrastructure.
The Foundation recommended that regulators move on to named entities that carry out regulated financial activities or have meaningful control of customer transactions and assets.
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Cardano Draws a Line Between Staking and Custodial Services
One of the clearest examples of this in Cardano’s reply was when they staked. A loner can choose to represent their stake to the very point that they lead the procedure for such consensus of the community without surrendering the property or staking any of their tokens in the middleman.
The Foundation stressed the need for a different approach to such direct protocol interaction than for systems with greater financial ownership concentration or decision-making ability of the company.
It also stated that simple technical access to a decentralized network as well as general purpose blockchain infrastructure and autonomous software are not financial services per se.
MiCA Boundaries Need More Clarity, Not More Categories
Cardano also voted against removing the distinction between MiCA and other financial controls including the MiFID II.
The classification of a crypto asset as a financial instrument should be based on its actual nature, and not its location on a crypto network. The Foundation stated, however, that there was a lack of clarity around hybrid tokens and assets that evolve over time.
It also stated that different national interpretations in EU member states could have an impact on MiCA’s objectives of creating one concerted crypto market.
The Foundation seeks less overlap between MiCA and payment rules, greater clarity for multi-issuer stablecoins and greater practical sustainability disclosure, which takes into account differences between the designs of blockchains.
Cardano additionally voiced opposition to the automatic classification of NFTs, crypto lending, perpetual futures and prediction markets for the new MiCa-specific categories.
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