The decentralized finance (DeFi) sector is growing faster than its regulation can change. New legal acts are coming into force in the European Union, international organizations are publishing new guidelines, and financial technology companies and lawyers must quickly determine which regulatory requirements apply in a specific situation.
This problem is addressed in the project "Formation and validation of a Decentralized Finance Regulatory Knowledge Graph (DeReKG) for semantic matchmaking and analysis of regulatory requirements" by Gintarė Košubienė, a doctoral student at Vilnius University's Kaunas Faculty, which is funded by the Vilnius University Research Promotion Fund.
The research will create a regulatory knowledge graph - a structured network of legal knowledge that links regulatory concepts, obligations, and their relationships. The system will not only be able to answer the question of what MiCA requirements apply to a specific DeFi service, but also demonstrate what legal acts and their provisions the answer is based on.
"Every day, we see how much time and knowledge the analysis of DeFi regulations requires. We want to create a reliable solution that would not only allow us to find relevant legal requirements but also explain why the answer is correct and on what sources of law it is based. This is an important step towards more transparent and reliable RegTech solutions," says project manager G. Košubienė.
G. Košubienė is also the founder of Micapass, a startup developing DeFi regulatory compliance solutions. The rapidly changing regulations and their complex application in practice prompted the question of whether the latest artificial intelligence technologies could help make this process faster, more accurate, and more reliable.
An interdisciplinary team will implement the project. The research will be joined by young researchers from the Faculty of Law of VU, Akvilė Jurkaitytė, who also holds the position of Senior Lawyer of the Finance and Insurance Team of Sorainen, and Legal Assistant Erlandas Prakapavičius. PhD student Jonas Mindaugas Rimšelis will apply artificial intelligence solutions from the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of VU.
The project team invites financial technology companies, regulatory compliance specialists, and legal experts to join the research. Their insights will be important for assessing the accuracy and applicability of the developed solution in real-world settings and for validating the research results. Such a partnership will help ensure that the research results are relevant not only to the academic community but also to business and regulatory practice.
Project budget: 17,934.7 EUR.
Project duration: 2026-09-01–2027-12-20.
Project number: MSF-JM-08/2026.