Will DeFi adoption officially end in 2026?

Guest Contributor

Shane Neagle

Editor In Chief • The Tokenist

Between the end of 2025 and up to July 2026, the European Union’s MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) regulation will go into full effect. Specifically, crypto exchanges, self-custody wallet providers, custodians, asset transfer providers, stablecoin issuers and portfolio managers will have to obtain formal authorization to continue operating.

Notably, out of the 27 EU member states, only Poland is delaying the national implementation of this strict crypto framework. Polish President Karol Nawrocki vetoed the MiCA-compliant bill this month because it would “threaten the freedoms of Poles, their property and the stability of the state.”

Moving forward, the Polish parliament would have to overturn the veto with a three-fifths majority vote.

One then has to wonder if the entire world would suffer such consequences when it comes to the promise of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). After all, the EU forever degraded the average person’s experience with the internet when it brought the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018.

Since then, the first interaction of the end-user on any website (even outside the EU) is to be harangued with cookie consent. Given that DeFi adoption is already fraught with onboarding, is MiCA the mark of DeFi’s end?

How MiCA Disincentivizes Crypto Startups

Although contained to EU member states, except Poland, MiCA prohibits the use of third-country equivalence. In other words, if a crypto team in Singapore or the US wishes to serve customers in the EU, they would have to go the extra mile of establishing legal presence in the EU, and only then ask for permission to operate.

The EU did this to eliminate regulatory arbitrage, disabling any substitutes to MiCA in other countries, even if they are nearly identical. Right there, this incentivizes DeFi services to simply geo-restrict the entire EU market.

Moreover, any crypto intermediary such as Binance or Coinbase is designated as CASP – Crypto-Asset Service Provider. In the MiCA framework, it is easy for these well-funded entities to transition to legal status and even to open physical offices in the EU.

While CASP status is favorable, it is also one that is hit with burdensome fees and reporting obligations similar to a banking institution. This has been the go-to play for regulatory frameworks since the rise of the modern state – gain control and oversight through centralized chokepoints.

How MiCA Opens the Door to Arbitrary Shutdowns

MiCA appears to be intentionally designed to favor large entities, willing to dedicate funds to administrative and capital reserve costs. In turn, crypto startups which have to count every cent would be disfavored.

Moreover, the entire point of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is to not have any entities that are eligible for incorporation into CASP status.

Rather, true DeFi protocols are simply sets of smart contracts on a given blockchain network. Technically, MiCA allows for this exemption, but only if the DeFi protocol is “fully decentralized”. This is where MiCA’s greyzone lies, in its ability to shutdown access to websites, as the front-end of smart contracts.

We have seen this in play when the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned virtual currency mixer Tornado Cash. Although OFAC couldn’t sanction the running code on a blockchain that makes this DeFi protocol, it effectively shut it down by pursuing compliance from the front-end intermediaries.

For the bulk of Web3, companies like Infura and Alchemy hold that position, as centralized infrastructure providers, also beholden to Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosting. This is a clear hierarchy of centralization that regulating agencies can point to when assessing if a DeFi protocol is “fully decentralized”, as per ESMA’s “spectrum of decentralization”.

And although these companies didn’t technically shut down Tornado’s service, they did so effectively by making the default UI website inaccessible. In turn, only a micro-fraction of technically-minded users were able to circumvent this front-end lockout.

What To Expect from the MiCA Rollout?

As it happened with the cookie consent fatigue, users are likely to encounter new “Terms of Service” pop-ups as the best case scenario. In the worst case, one should expect outright geo-blocks in anticipation of the deadlines, necessitating a VPN service.

However, even if the VPN is legal to use, bypassing it may itself violate ToS of the protocol and expose individuals to legal risk in home jurisdictions. In such an environment, some participants may reassess whether the potential upside justifies the added friction, revisiting core concepts like capital gains or dividend income when comparing crypto exposure with more traditional assets.

On the upside, MiCA doesn’t consider self-custody wallet providers as CASPs, which is applicable to mainstream wallets such as Metamask, Phantom, WalletConnect, Binance Wallet and others.

Yet, another EU framework, Transfer of Funds Regulation (TFR), injects traceability when users transfer funds from these self-custodian wallets to CASPs like Binance. Specifically, CASPs are required to collect logs of these transfers for tax/illicit purposes, typically above the €1,000 threshold.

This way, CASPs maintain audit-ready trails, to be used by regulating agencies at will. Lastly, despite the entire point of MiCA centered around regulatory harmonization, Poland already demonstrated disunity.

This is evident even with EU members that accepted MiCA, as they implement it to a varying degree. July’s European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) report confirmed this dynamic, effectively seeking to patch up the implementation holes that may lead to arbitrage opportunities.

Given December’s proposal by the European Commission to enhance ESMA powers, this patching is likely to succeed.

The Bottom Line

Just as the pursuit of net-zero policies is crippling EU’s industrial prowess and standards of living, the hyper-regulatory nature of the EU is ousting DeFi innovation. One of the reasons is the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) implementation, which was canceled in the US in favor of privately-managed stablecoins.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has long been worried that stablecoins could drain the euro zone’s retail coffers. Viewed through this lens, MiCA is less about consumer protection and more a defensive financial policy.

Even if the underlying smart contracts remain immutable, MiCA’s poorly defined gray area allows regulatory agencies to leverage existing chokepoints – front-end hosting.

Ultimately, MiCA represents a strategic effort to manage systemic risk and solidify central authority in the digital age. And if genuine DeFi innovation and adoption suffer, it is a small price to pay in the eyes of EU bureaucrats.