coinedition.com
The firm behind Ethereum’s most popular layer 2 scaling solution Polygon recently penned an open letter to the Representatives of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the European Commission, seeking clarification on the scope and intent of the Data Act, especially its Article 30. The primary objective was to keep permissionless systems away from the purview of said legislation.
In its letter to European lawmakers and policymakers, Polygon Labs sought amendments to the Data Act, which has become crucial legislation for the tech space in Europe. The proposed amendments seek to get permissionless technologies and their creators excluded from the scope of regulation. The letter highlighted problematic statements in the legislation and suggested amendments and clarifications accordingly.
Regarding the motivation for the letter, Polygon stated that their interest in ensuring the growth and responsible development of permissionless blockchain-based systems globally prompted them to write to the policymakers of Europe. France-based crypto wallet maker Ledger was also a part of the letter.
Polygon Labs’ Chief Policy Officer recently took to Twitter to comment on the letter. “Art. 30 imposes requirements on a ‘party offering smart contracts in the context of an agreement to make data available…’ B/c all smart contracts share some sort of data, the proposed law is overbroad & likely unenforceable in decentralized systems,” she tweeted.
Rettig further explained that the amendments would clarify that smart contracts aren’t agreements and that the Data Act would only be applicable to permissioned systems. According to the Chief Policy Officer, the proposed amendments will bring the legislation into alignment with MiCA’s exclusion of crypto-asset services.