Decentralized Provenance Metadata Registries for Asset-Referenced Tokens

Abstract

The recent EU regulation on Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) represents significant progress in establishing a multi-jurisdiction framework for crypto-assets that will enable the greater participation of consumers in the digital assets industry. One type of token recognized by MiCA is the asset-referenced token, where the value-bearing physical asset being referenced by the token is external to the token. We discuss several design considerations for the on-chain and off- chain metadata for the asset-referenced token that represents physical real-world assets. The EU Data Spaces provides an interesting data management framework for the off-chain metadata underpinning the MiCA asset-referenced tokens, including asset definition schemas, asset profiles, digitized asset records, and tokenized asset records. The Web3 decentralized registries for assets-related metadata should be a promising application of the data spaces framework in the EU.