The European Commission has revealed the inclusion of 41 new regulatory bodies into the second cohort of its European Blockchain Sandbox Initiative (EBSI), as reported by Cointelegraph. These authorities come from 22 nations across the European Union and the European Economic Area, with participants from countries such as France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Germany, and several others.

The EBSI was established to promote the application of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and aims to create a collaborative framework for blockchain projects alongside regulators and authorities. The initiative focuses on identifying legal and regulatory challenges to blockchain innovation while fostering regulatory clarity for decentralized solutions. The European Commission emphasized that the sandbox will enhance the understanding of advanced blockchain technologies among regulators and supervisors, offering legal guidance and regulatory insights in a secure and confidential setting.

Each year, the EBSI plans to support 20 projects that explore blockchain use cases, selected based on their business readiness, legal significance, and alignment with EU policy goals. Chosen projects will benefit from legal and regulatory consulting provided by the law firm Bird & Bird, along with opportunities to engage in discussions about regulatory issues with the participating authorities.

On June 13, the EBSI announced the names of the companies that would join its second cohort, featuring diverse use cases that range from tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) to blockchain-enabled digital passports. One notable inclusion is Iota, a crypto ecosystem with an open-source distributed ledger. Iota highlighted that being part of the EBSI represents a crucial step for its identity solution, facilitating conversations on KYC (Know Your Customer) protocols and privacy in the Web3 space, an area of increasing focus for regulators exploring decentralized finance (DeFi).