As the digital asset industry evolves, so does the language we use to describe it. A promising new term —“mature blockchain” — has entered the regulatory discourse via the CLARITY Act, a bipartisan legislative proposal aimed at providing much-needed regulatory certainty around digital assets in the U.S. Among other things, it defines a “mature blockchain” as one that is sufficiently decentralized and not reliant on any single person or entity to operate.

This makes decentralization a critical legal distinction, and may also determine whether an asset on a given network should be treated as a security.

However, fitting the definition of decentralized doesn’t mean a blockchain is ready for global scale or real-world adoption. To bring blockchain technology into mainstream, real-world use,

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