The 'one holder can meet quorum alone' test for DAO decentralisation under MiCA is a law firm's own 2026 formulation — neither the Danish FSA's June 2024 principles nor the EBA-ESMA January 2025 report uses the word 'quorum'

regulationmicadefidaodecentralizationquorumcryptounverified-mechanism

(Promotion title, 2026-07-11: "EU crypto regulators' 2024-25 test for a 'sufficiently decentralized' DAO turns on whether one holder can meet quorum alone." Retitled 2026-09-11 after both primary texts were read — see audit_status and the correction below.)

Under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA), an arrangement that is "fully decentralised" can fall outside parts of the regime — which forces regulators to define, operationally, when a DAO is decentralised enough. A January 2026 client alert by Aurum Law, discussing the Danish FSA's June 2024 principles and the January 2025 EBA–ESMA joint report, takes a substance-over-form stance: a decentralization label does not matter if a single address can single-handedly control outcomes. In the firm's own "Governance Layer" analysis it offers the test: "a holder may be considered significant if they can meet quorum alone or consistently influence governance outcomes."

Correction 2026-09-11. That sentence is Aurum's, not the regulators'. (Promotion wording: "Per a law-firm summary of the Danish FSA's June 2024 principles and the January 2025 EBA–ESMA joint report, the regulators take a substance-over-form stance … The operative test, as relayed: …") On the cited page the sentence sits in the firm's own analysis, two sections before its separate summary of the Danish FSA, which it paraphrases as examining "whether the structure and distribution of governance tokens indicate centralisation." Both primaries were then read directly. The Danish FSA's Principles for the assessment of decentralisation in the markets for crypto-assets (25 June 2024, 27 pp.) never uses the word "quorum"; its governance test is concentration — "the concentration of holdings and the method of distribution of governance tokens" — with the worked example of "a single person [who] holds over 50% of the governance tokens issued and therefore controls the supply of the regulated activity." The EBA–ESMA Joint Report on recent developments in crypto-assets (16 January 2025, 81 pp.) also never uses "quorum"; it states that "MiCAR, however, does not specify how to interpret references to fully decentralised," and treats concentration in the vocabulary of "51% governance attacks," "whales," and "veto or other control rights (e.g. 'multisig wallets')." The regulators' test, where one is stated at all, is a majority-of-tokens or control-rights test, not a quorum test.

The promotion's next paragraph is preserved for the record of what the bridge was hoped to be; read "if accurate" as now answered in the negative. If accurate, this would have been a striking terminological reuse: the regulators' control test is stated in the same primitive — meeting quorum — that Gifford's 1979 replication protocol used for data consistency, applied here to decide who really controls a token-governed protocol. And its animating worry — that nominal token weight overstates or understates real control — is precisely Banzhaf's 1968 weight-versus-power gap, now written into financial law. The broader lineage is observation-weighted-voting-power-gap-recurs-across-cs-law-regulation; the DeFi governance objects being regulated descend from the crypto lineage in claim-nakamoto-bitcoin-leaned-on-wei-dai-b-money.

The claim carries an [unverified-mechanism -- needs primary] flag from the capture and stays seedling: a regulatory mechanism claim must clear Tier 1–2, and this one currently rests on a Tier-3 secondary recap. The verification is routed to question-verify-mica-danish-fsa-eba-esma-decentralization-quorum-test-primary. [2026-09-11: the routed verification has now been done against both primaries, and the flag resolves negatively — see the Correction above. What survives at Tier 1 is narrower and still worth having: the Danish FSA's ">50% of governance tokens" example and the EBA–ESMA "51% governance attack" framing are both majority-control tests, which is Banzhaf's worry without Gifford's word.]