The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued a final report providing guidance on how firms should apply to operate a DLT-based market infrastructure.
These guidelines provide templates for market participants to apply to operate any form of distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based market infrastructure under the DLT Pilot Regulation. This includes applications to establish a DLT multilateral trading facility (MTF), a DLT settlement system or a DLT trading and settlement system.
These provisions also provide templates for DLT market infrastructure entities to apply for limited exemptions from specified provisions under the Markets in Financial Infrastructure Regulation (MIFIR), the second Markets in Financial Infrastructure Directive (MiFID II), or the Central Securities Depositories Regulation (CSDR).
ESMA conducted a public consultation on draft guidelines for DLT market infrastructure application procedures that ran from 11 July until 9 September 2022.
Its final report publishes its conclusions from the consultation process. These guidelines include minimum instructions that national competent authorities should provide to market participants to assist the application process.
These provisions relate to Article 8 to 10 of EU Regulation 2022/858 regarding the development of a pilot regime for DLT market infrastructures.
