Web3 trade group, the Web3 Foundation (W3F), has called for more transparency around EU regulation of web3 technology during the Polkadot Decoded conference in Denmark.
According to W3F’s Chief Legal Officer, Daniel Schoenberger, decision makers in Brussels have put a lid on innovation in the sector by bringing in new policies that do not reflect the technology’s properties.
Despite this, Schoenberger noted that there is light at the end of the tunnel after all, with some regulations adequately reflecting what web3 needs to evolve, such as the EU Market in Crypto Assets (MICA) framework that insulates the crypto market from fraud and money laundering.
“Companies should be regulated for what they are, and what they do. We are encouraged by how some jurisdictions have tailored their regulations to the reality of the technology,” Schoenberger said.
“A good example of this deep understanding is the EU’s MiCA regulation, which has included its own class of utility token, a crucial step to recognising the different classes of tokens based on their functionalities.”
Also at the conference, Paige Collings, Senior Speech and Privacy Activist at non-profit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, took the stage to remind everyone that user security and privacy should be the first thing considered before moving on with any web3 regulations.
She added: “It is important that any regulation should be addressing behaviours rather than technologies. Just because something is decentralised doesn’t mean we don’t have bad actors.
“We need to make sure the same considerations of the centralised web are being applied in the decentralised world as well, and that we are not just taking this as an opportunity to innovate without any consideration of people’s speech and privacy, but we are putting that at the forefront of any new developments.”
