Abstract
A compte rendu and analysis of a closed-door, non-attribution roundtable held in May 2026 — convening regulators, supervisors, legal practitioners, academics, exchange operators, protocol builders, and policy specialists around the European Commission's consultation on decentralised finance (DeFi), launched ahead of the mandatory review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). The discussion converged on several structuring findings: that the threshold question is not how to regulate DeFi but whether identified risks justify regulation at all, and that "sufficient decentralisation" remains undefined and would benefit from sharper analytical tools.
Executive summary
This note records and analyses a closed-door roundtable held in May 2026 under a non-attribution convention, convening regulators, supervisors, legal practitioners, academics, exchange operators, protocol builders, and policy specialists around the European Commission's consultation on decentralised finance (DeFi) — launched ahead of the mandatory review of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA).
Positions are reported without ascription to individuals or institutions (except where named protocols or public documents were invoked as examples). The discussion converged on several structuring findings: that the threshold question is not how to regulate DeFi but whether identified risks justify regulation at all; and that "sufficient decentralisation" remains undefined and would benefit from analytical tools borrowed from adjacent disciplines. The full note follows below.