France Wants Crypto Exchanges Held Liable for the DeFi Apps They Open to Users

October 25, 2026 MM Crypto Team

France Pushes Platform Accountability for DeFi

France’s financial regulators have a new message for crypto exchanges: if you open the door to decentralised finance, you own what walks through it. The country’s Treasury, the financial markets regulator AMF, the Banque de France and the prudential supervisor ACPR have sent a joint plan to the European Union asking that exchanges be held liable when they give users access to DeFi applications. The proposal, reported on October 21, is one of the most assertive attempts yet to pin responsibility for decentralised activity on the platforms that connect ordinary users to it.

The plan also asks the EU to lower the 15 million daily user threshold that defines a “big exchange” under current rules, which would bring more platforms into the toughest tier of supervision. And according to Unchained, the DeFi applications themselves could face compliance checks lasting as long as three years. The proposal is only a proposal for now: the EU’s report on changes to MiCA, the bloc’s landmark crypto regulation, is not due until June 30, 2027.

What France Is Actually Proposing

The heart of the French plan is a liability rule. Today, an exchange can offer users a gateway into DeFi while arguing that what happens on the other side is not its responsibility. The protocol is decentralised, the argument goes, so nobody is in charge, and the exchange is merely a neutral piece of infrastructure. France’s regulators want to change that logic: if an exchange gives its users access to a DeFi app, the exchange should be liable for what that app does to them.

That is a significant shift in how responsibility is assigned in crypto. The industry’s founding idea was that decentralisation distributes responsibility so thinly that no single party can be blamed. France’s plan pushes the other way, arguing that the party with the customer relationship, the brand, and the revenue is the right party to hold accountable.

The threshold change matters too. Under the current framework, only the largest exchanges — those above 15 million daily users — fall into the most demanding supervisory category. France wants that bar lowered, which would pull mid-sized platforms into the top tier. The practical effect would be more reporting, more capital requirements, and more scrutiny for a much larger slice of the European exchange market. Combined with the liability rule, the message is unmistakable: France wants fewer, better-supervised gateways between ordinary users and DeFi.

Why France Is Moving Now

France has long been one of Europe’s most active crypto regulators, and its posture has always been more interventionist than the laissez-faire approach favoured in some other capitals. The AMF has been vocal about the risks of DeFi for years, warning that permissionless lending, trading, and yield products can expose retail users to losses they do not understand, with no obvious party to complain to when things go wrong. The joint plan is the logical next step: four of the country’s most powerful financial institutions speaking with one voice to Brussels.

The timing is also tied to MiCA itself. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation was a world first when it passed, but it deliberately left DeFi largely outside its scope, on the theory that truly decentralised activity has no issuer or operator to regulate. That gap is now the subject of intense debate. The EU is due to report on possible changes to MiCA by June 30, 2027, and member states are using the run-up to stake out positions. France is staking out the toughest one: close the gap by making the centralised gateways liable.

Paris appears to have concluded that Europe should not follow the American or British paths, and that the bloc’s advantage lies in protecting consumers most credibly.

The Three-Year Checks: What Unchained Reported

One detail in the reporting stands out for DeFi developers: Unchained reported that DeFi apps themselves could carry compliance checks lasting three years. The precise mechanics are not yet public, but the implication is that decentralised applications would face a long, formal review process before being treated as compliant for European users. A three-year check is not a quick audit. It is a regulatory programme, closer in spirit to the licensing of a bank than to the listing of a token.

If that element survives into law, it would reshape the economics of building DeFi for European users. Small teams shipping fast would face a compliance burden they cannot afford, and the advantage would shift to larger, better-funded projects that can sustain a multi-year regulatory process.

The uncertainty cuts both ways. Because the proposal is at such an early stage, its final form could look very different from the outline reported this week. The EU’s MiCA review is eighteen months away, and the legislative process after that will take longer still. Developers and exchanges have time to adapt — but the direction is now on the record, and planning against it would be prudent.

How This Compares With the UK and the US

France’s approach contrasts sharply with the approaches taking shape elsewhere. In the United States, the SEC under Chair Paul Atkins is running a deregulatory campaign dubbed “Project Crypto” that could include exemptions from specific regulatory requirements, while senators negotiate a market structure bill that would largely hand industry oversight to the CFTC. The American direction is toward lighter-touch supervision and a smaller role for the securities regulator. France is moving toward heavier supervision and a larger role for the state.

The United Kingdom sits somewhere in between. The FCA has been consulting on how DeFi should be treated, taking a more exploratory approach that asks the industry for input before writing rules. London’s instinct is to regulate by conversation; Paris’s instinct is to regulate by decision. Both are legitimate, and both carry risks: consultation can drift into delay, while decisive action can miss the mark. But the contrast matters for businesses choosing where to base themselves. A DeFi project deciding between Paris, London, and New York now faces three genuinely different regulatory futures.

Over time, that could produce a fragmented global market in which the same protocol is effectively a different product in different jurisdictions. That is already happening with stablecoins and tokenised securities; France’s plan would extend it to DeFi itself.

What It Means for Exchanges Operating in Europe

For exchanges, the French proposal is a compliance headache with a long fuse. The liability rule would force platforms to vet the DeFi apps they surface to users — to audit smart contracts, to assess the teams behind them, and to take responsibility for failures. That is expensive, and it changes the business model. An exchange that today lists dozens of DeFi integrations with minimal diligence would need to treat each one like a product it sells, with all the testing and accountability that implies.

Some exchanges will welcome the clarity. A clear liability rule, however strict, is easier to plan around than an ambiguous one, and the largest platforms already run the kind of diligence France is describing. The burden falls hardest on smaller exchanges and on the aggregators whose entire value proposition is breadth of access. If every integration carries liability, breadth becomes a liability too, and the rational response is to offer fewer, safer DeFi apps.

The industry’s lobbying will now shift to Brussels, where exchanges will argue that liability for activity they do not control is unfair and will drive users offshore. France’s answer is that this is precisely why liability must sit with the gateways users actually use.

The Bigger Question: Who Is Responsible in DeFi?

Strip away the institutional detail, and the French proposal is about one of the oldest questions in crypto: when nobody is in charge, who is responsible? The industry’s answer has always been that code is law, that users accept the risks, and that decentralisation is its own protection. Regulators have never fully accepted that answer, and France is now proposing to formalise the rejection: if you are the party that brings the user to the protocol, you are responsible for the protocol.

If adopted across the EU, that principle would reach into the decentralised activity MiCA deliberately left alone — and set up a direct clash with the American approach, where the trend is toward exempting DeFi from exactly this kind of accountability.

For now, the practical advice is patience with vigilance. Nothing in the French plan is law yet, and the MiCA review is not due until June 30, 2027. But proposals from four of France’s most powerful financial institutions, sent jointly to Brussels, are not trial balloons. They are the opening position of a serious negotiation, and anyone building or investing in European DeFi should treat them as such.

FAQ

What is France proposing on DeFi? France’s Treasury, AMF, Banque de France and ACPR sent a joint plan to the EU asking that exchanges be held liable when they give users access to DeFi apps, and that the 15 million daily user threshold for a “big exchange” be lowered.

How long could DeFi compliance checks last? Unchained reported that DeFi apps could carry checks lasting three years, though the precise mechanics are not yet public.

Is this law yet? No. It is only a proposal. The EU’s report on MiCA changes is due June 30, 2027, and legislation would follow after that.

How does this differ from the US approach? The US is moving toward lighter-touch regulation under the SEC’s Project Crypto and a market structure bill favouring CFTC oversight, while France wants heavier supervision and platform liability.

What does it mean for exchanges? Exchanges would need to vet the DeFi apps they surface to users and take responsibility for them, which could mean fewer, more carefully chosen integrations.

What does it mean for DeFi users in Europe? In time, European users could get stronger protections — and face more restrictions — than users elsewhere.

Source: Cointelegraph

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