"The Cardano Foundation has officially appealed to the European Commission, urging it not to extend the scope of the MiCA regulation to the areas of decentralized finance (DeFi) and staking. In its 19-page position paper, the foundation emphasized that rules should be based on real financial risks and operational functions, rather than the blockchain technology itself.

This statement was issued in response to September recommendations from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which proposed tightening supervision over the crypto market and creating a new category of regulated services for gateways to DeFi protocols."

"Cardano states that regulation must assess the substance of a financial transaction. The mere existence of a public blockchain does not automatically make a software developer a financial service provider."

"The Foundation cited the Cardano ecosystem as an example, where ADA token holders can delegate coins to secure the network without transferring custody of them to third parties and without locking them up. Such direct participation in network operations cannot be equated to commercial staking services from centralized intermediaries."

"The excessive expansion of MiCA and the duplication of requirements will create legal uncertainty, increase compliance costs, and slow down the development of Web3 in Europe.Regulators are being urged to clearly separate the spheres of influence of MiCA and existing EU financial legislation (in particular, the MiFID II directive).In parallel, the Cardano Foundation is stepping up pressure in the US as well: on October 20, 2026, jointly with five other blockchain organizations, it sent a letter to the SEC demanding the official recognition of digital commodities as assets that are not securities."