EF global policy in the EU - 3 recommendations

As the EF starts to prioritize the EU in it's Global Policy initiatives, I had some perspectives to share. :)

The crypto industry's policy education efforts and government relations have historically been driven by centralized actors like exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and others. Unfortunately, the technical teams, researchers, startups, and builders that make up a majority of our industry have been under-represented. These communities lack coordinated resources and shared understanding to engage effectively on issues affecting the Ethereum community.

The EF is positioned to be the perfect neutral coordinator—creating educational resources, convening stakeholders, and building the knowledge infrastructure that enables the ecosystem to flourish in the EU, in alignment with government initiatives.

At this moment, there are 3 major policy areas where ecosystem coordination and education are urgently needed:

Data Sovereignty: Producing educational materials on blockchain solutions to EU data privacy challenges

Major Grants Funding: Creating accessible resources connecting @Ethereum startups with existing funding programs

MiCA Act Education: Educating teams that operate in the EU on the MiCA Act, and how it impacts them

Before I get into each of these issues, I'll start with a bit of backstory.

why I care.

I'm a US and Hungarian dual citizen. I started working in US "libertarian" politics in 2016 because my most fundamental belief is that humans deserve to be sovereign. I led grassroots policy initiatives; empowering businesses, individuals, researchers and more to advocate on issues that impacted them. This work has supported dozens of legislative outcomes at the state and federal level, across topics like financial regulatory reform, economic freedom, and business policy. I learned about crypto at an anarchist meetup in 2016, and made my first crypto transaction buying a pocket knife with @dashpay at @Porkfest in 2018. By end of 2018, I was convinced that we could re-build society from the ground up using blockchain as a means of coordination. I dropped everything, and went full-time crypto that year.

Between 2018 and now, I worked on some of the earliest enterprise banking blockchain projects in North America, led a 200 person international Blockchain Governance standards body under @IEEEorg, led the Enterprise EOS Alliance, and educated business and government stakeholders on blockchain through Fedex Institute, the European Comission, and others. Between 2021 and 2025, I founded two VC backed crypto startups - working to create censorship-resistant marketplaces, in different forms.

In 2021, as the United States violently increased legal action against crypto founders, I fled for the European Union and have lived there since. The EU is often made fun of for being "slow on innovation" - but they have been vastly more pro-crypto for the past decade than any other major economic block globally. Since moving to the EU, I raised Major EU Grants Funding for my own blockchain startups, met personally with the policy experts who shaped the MiCA Act, and consulted multiple friends of mine on forming EU entities for their crypto startups and accessing the resources available to them. I have experienced only positive curiosity about crypto from institutions. The historic open-source culture of the EU has produced some of the best blockchain engineers that I know, and the EU still holds the original Ethereum developer hub: Berlin.

While most crypto government relations today has centered around the United States, I believe that the European Union can serve as an even more viable partner for regulatory clarity and long-term support. With this new prioritization on EU policy, the EF has the opportunity to accelerate the momentum that is already present here through strategic coordination and education among ecosystem participants navigating EU regulatory frameworks and programs.

there are 3 major policy areas where the EF's coordination is needed in the EU.

If you've met me IRL, you've probably had me ramble at you at length about at least one of these issues.

Data Sovereignty

One of the top policy concerns of the EU today is data sovereignty: making sure people own and control their data. The EU was a pioneer in creating user data protections like GDPR. They have been eager to support technologies that can help companies put data in the hands of users, and stop abusive data mining behavior.

Leveraging blockchain technology is one of the only ways to enable fully user-custodied data and access control. By using tools like @LitProtocol,companies can avoid touching user data directly, significantly reducing compliance costs.

The "blockchain helps with data privacy" narrative was one of the factors that allowed my team to close major grants funding for my last startup.

The EF should produce neutral educational materials explaining how blockchain technology addresses data sovereignty challenges, and convene stakeholders (researchers, standards bodies, civil society) to share knowledge that can inform public dialogue on these technical solutions.

Major Grants Funding

In 2025 alone the European Union allocated over €192.8 billion in grant and investment funding for innovative startups. These grants are accessible by startups and researchers through thousands of individual programs run by incubators, private grant management foundations, universities, and local governments. I want to emphasize that the European Union ACTUALLY GIVES OUT about 2 billion Euros in funding every year.

As previously mentioned, the EU likes blockchain because it supports data sovereignty and data interoperability (a big issue across their multi-nation-state coalition). Blockchain companies, including decentralized protocols, meet the qualifications to receive funding through these government programs, but no one is applying for them.

I have been personally sharing access to these grant opportunities, introducing friends to grant giving institutions, and publishing guides for years, but the process remains opaque and difficult to follow at scale.

The EF should create accessible resources (guides, explainers, aggregated opportunity lists) and facilitate connections between builders and grant-giving institutions, enabling the ecosystem to navigate these programs independently. Grant-giving institutions are eager to partner - I've already had these conversations with them.

Education on the MiCA Act

The MiCA Act is now in force across the EU, creating the world's first comprehensive crypto regulatory framework. But, most builders, startups, and technical communities don't understand what MiCA actually requires and how it applies to their projects.

This knowledge gap is critical because:

Complexity: MiCA spans multiple token categories (asset-referenced tokens, e-money tokens, utility tokens) with different compliance requirements. Startups are struggling to determine which category applies to their project and what that means operationally.

Implementation Gaps: MiCA implementation varies across member states, and there's limited accessible information on how different countries are interpreting and enforcing the rules. Technical teams need practical guidance.

Resource Asymmetry: Large centralized players can afford compliance teams and legal counsel. Smaller projects and decentralized protocols cannot, creating an uneven playing field that disadvantages the builders MiCA was meant to support.

The EF should produce comprehensive, accessible educational materials breaking down MiCA requirements for different project types, convene stakeholders to share implementation experiences across member states, and create practical frameworks (checklists, decision trees, explainer guides) that enable startups to understand and navigate MiCA compliance independently.

this is exciting, but it's also urgent.

There's never been a more exciting time in crypto. We finally have movement on regulatory clarity in major jurisdictions. We are seeing massive institutional interest that wasn't possible before government narratives turned around this past year. There is momentum, but it needs direction: we need more coordinated knowledge-sharing and accessible resources to ensure technical communities can effectively engage and have their voices heard alongside big players.

The EF's role is urgently important: technical communities currently lack the resources and frameworks to engage effectively in policy development—leaving critical gaps in how open infrastructure is understood by regulators. Teams that can qualify for major grants are going un-funded, simply because they don't realize the resources available to them.

We need coordination.

Now, let's do the work.

For freedom,

Kirsten