New General Data Protection Law (GDPR) guidelines have led to the shutdown of the Parity ICO Passport Service (PICOPS). The main conflict is between blockchain’s immutability and GDPR’s right to deletion of data clause.
With fines getting as severe as EUR 20 million, it has prompted other cryptocurrency companies to clean up their act as well. Trading platform LocalBitcoins recently made changes to their terms of services, which will come into effect on 25 May.
The service will cease to exist from 24 May due to these interpretations. Since PRICOPs allowed anyone to assign an Ethereum address to a unique identity, one could see how it involved personal data.
IF PICOPS was adjusted to make the service GDPR compliant, PICOPS would only be able to offer a “very limited set of features”. The amount of resources required to make the service GDPR compliant simply would not be worth the features PICOPS would be able to offer.
“Because of this, the significant resources required to make PICOPS GDPR-compliant, and the fact that PICOPS is not part of our core technology stack, we have decided to discontinue the service despite overwhelming market needs and demand,” said Parity.
Parity’s shutdown of PICOPS comes after a busy year for the Ethereum client, assisting in many ICOs and token sales in 2017. Parity was also in headlines for two hacks, resulting in over USD 300 million in ETH gone.
What effect this has on the ICO market going forward is still unknown. Ethereum has become the de-facto standard for issuing tokens due to its smart contract capabilities, but with PICOPS gone, this gives other platforms a shot.
Despite the shutdown of PICOPS, Parity is working with regulators to inform them on what potential effects laws may have on the industry.
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