- The European Crypto Initiative has rebranded to the European Ethereum Institute.
- The Brussels-based nonprofit believes the blockchain is becoming more relevant.
- It isn’t clear whether Ethereum will have a significant role within the EU’s future.
Crypto nonprofit the European Crypto Initiative has rebranded to become the European Ethereum Institute, with the advocacy group claiming the blockchain will have a central role in the continent’s digital economy.
The shift reflects the nonprofit’s conviction that Ethereum is simply the best network to build upon.
“If Europe wants to take a serious view on the future of public blockchain infrastructure, Ethereum is the place it has to engage with,” Marina Markežič, the organisation’s executive director, notified DL News.
As the world’s largest economy, the US, races ahead with crypto-friconcludely legislation, heavily focutilizing on stablecoins, the EU is in the process of pushing ahead with a digital euro. It isn’t clear how much of a role public blockchains will play in Europe’s future digital economy.
Gold standard of blockchains
Brussels-based EEI pushes to support shape the EU’s crypto regulation — specifically for public blockchains to be applyd in the union.
The nonprofit declared its rebrand comes as Ethereum becomes a more important crypto network and the union advances with key legislation seeing to regulate the crypto space.
“Europe’s most consequential regulatory decisions right now — the MiCA review, the Digital Omnibus package, the GDPR reform, the Settlement and Market Integration Package, and the digital euro — will all shape how public blockchains function in Europe,” Markežič declared.
The nonprofit added in a statement: “Ethereum is the gold standard of public blockchain infrastructure — decentralised, permissionless, credibly neutral, and battle-tested at scale.”
Open or closed digital economy?
Ethereum has piqued the interest of Wall Street titans in recent years mainly becaapply stablecoins — digital tokens typically pegged to the dollar — are playing an increasingly largeger part in traditional payment infrastructure.
Major companies and banks are now debuting, or at least researching, the tokens. US President Donald Trump signed legislation to regulate the assets last year.
But stablecoins have a compacter market in the EU; the union is instead more interested in a central bank digital currency — a centralised project that some in the crypto space argue is the very opposite to the ethos of permissionless blockchains.
Still, the EEI argues that permissionless blockchains — specifically Ethereum — are what the EU requireds to build a fair and functioning digital economy.
“A new internet is being built on it right now, and Europe requireds to be part of it,” the nonprofit declared.
Mathew Di Salvo is a news correspondent with DL News. Got a tip? Email at mdisalvo@dlnews.com.
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