With its Sandbox, Europe opens secure blockchain experimentation

L’European Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox is launched by the European Commission. It offers a legal framework allowing between 2023 and 2026 to conduct experiments around blockchain solutions.

The finance industry has the Pilot Plan to test the use of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) in market infrastructures. However, the blockchain allows other use cases.

These projects now also have a regulatory framework of three years. On February 14, the European Commission launched theEuropean Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox.

20 projects selected each year from 2023 to 2026

This sandbox or regulation sandbox should therefore allow experiments to be conducted around innovative use cases based on the DLT. This framework is established for a period of three years from 2023 to 2026.

Each year, upon expression of interest from candidates, it will host 20 projectsfrom the private and public sectors on theEuropean Blockchain Services Infrastructure. The sandbox must therefore encourage and stimulate innovation.

This regulated environment is built around a “consortium under the leadership of Bird & Bird and its consulting arm OXYGY, supported by blockchain experts from WBNoDE and the web-designers of Spindox “.

The Commission further states that the “selection process will be overseen by a panel of independent academic experts. The Sandbox is an opportunity to develop new uses of the blockchainwhich today tend to be concentrated in finance.

Legal security for blockchain projects

While pilot projects have shown the significant potential of DLTs in industry sectors, legal uncertainty prevails as governance remains shared among many actors,” the European executive points out.

The new framework should thereby increase the legal certainty by improving “the dialogue between regulators and innovators”. The European Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox should therefore provide the necessary “trust environment”.

This is intended for companies in all sectors with projects that go beyond the PoC stage. This is a prerequisite. The solutions must be close to market or in the process of being marketed.

The first candidates, including startups and scale-ups, necessarily operating in Europecan now submit their application to the European authorities. They have until April 14 to claim to join the selection of 20 use cases of the class of 2023.

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