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ESMA issued their final DLT report but continues to underestimate open networks.

Our previous comment to the European Securities Markets Authority was referenced in the final report; it looks like we were the only commenter sticking up for permissionless blockchain networks:

For many respondents, appropriate governance frameworks will play a key role to ensure trust and provide legal certainty to market participants. Many of them agreed that permissioned-based DLT networks would be the most appropriate for financial markets. One respondent however disagreed that permissioned-based DLT networks were more appropriate. According to this respondent, all permissioned-based systems remain in the proof-of-concept stage of development. In contrast, permissionless systems have been running in public for almost ten years and are battle-tested.

But unfortunately the bulk of the report continues to prematurely identify permissioned systems as the only viable technological architecture for building-out future financial systems:

Importantly, ESMA understands that the DLT that would be used for financial services would differ from the Blockchain designed for Bitcoins in a number of ways. In particular, while the Bitcoin Blockchain is an open system where all can contribute to the validation process (‘permissionless’ system), the DLT that is likely to be used in financial markets would be a permissioned system with authorised participants only. Permissioned DLTs have a number of advantages compared to permissionless systems when it comes to governance issues, scale or the risk of illicit activities, which makes them more suitable for securities markets. Yet, some of the benefits attached to permissionless frameworks, e.g. ‘openness’, may be lost in a permissioned framework. In line with current market initiatives in securities markets, the rest of the report deliberately focuses on permissioned DLT.

As we point out in our recent report, the “benefits attached to permissionless frameworks” (e.g. privacy, security, and interoperability) shouldn’t be underestimated. Even in the securities settlement process, “openness” may matter in the end.