On 14 February 2023, the European Commission announced[i] the launch of the European Regulatory Sandbox for Blockchain. Effective from 2023 to 2026, the Sandbox is set to support 20 projects per year including those public sector use cases which are deployed on the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), in a quest to establish a pan-European framework and to address existing legal uncertainties surrounding the technology as well as its applications across sectors.

Any entity (start ups or scale ups) from any industry sector, which is established in the European Economic Area (EEA), including public entities, with DLT-based projects that have already concluded their proof-of-concept stages and could potentially be considered to be at an early stage of becoming operational are eligible to participate.

Therefore, the award criteria would take into account and span around three angles, namely candidates’ business maturity, legal and regulatory relevance of projects alongside proximity with the EU’s “wider policy priorities”.

[i] See here https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/launch-european-blockchain-regulatory-sandbox.