Avalanche establishes policy advisory council to coordinate global crypto engagement

Avalanche’s ecosystem organizations have created a formal advisory council to centralize their regulatory outreach and policy strategy as global rulemaking accelerates. The group is chaired by Ava Labs’ lead counsel and includes senior executives from the Avalanche treasury entities and other ecosystem operators, signaling a coordinated effort across the project’s governance and commercial arms. Its stated agenda for 2026 targets three substantive areas: how digital assets are legally characterized, the regulatory treatment of intermediaries that connect users to blockchain services, and safeguards for open internet access. Those priorities reflect current legislative and enforcement activity in the United States, as well as emerging frameworks in the European Union, the UK, and Japan, meaning the council aims to engage on multiple regulatory fronts rather than focus on a single jurisdiction. By aligning positions among the foundation, developer organization and treasury companies, Avalanche seeks to present unified technical and policy arguments to regulators, reducing the risk of fragmented responses that can arise when ecosystem actors speak separately. This unified posture can speed technocratic conversations — about custody models, on-chain governance signals, or cross-border compliance mechanisms — because technical teams and policy advocates will be operating from shared assumptions. The move also positions Avalanche to influence definitions that have practical consequences for product architecture, such as whether certain tokens are treated as securities and how intermediaries are scoped for registration or licensing. If successful, the council could lower compliance costs for Avalanche-linked products by promoting interoperable standards and reducing duplicate approval efforts across jurisdictions. However, centralizing advocacy carries reputational and regulatory trade-offs: a unified voice is easier for policymakers to engage with, but it also concentrates risk if a regulator treats the ecosystem as a single entity. The council’s effectiveness will depend on its ability to translate technical nuances into policy-ready proposals and to coordinate with external stakeholders in markets that are moving at different speeds. In short, this is a political and technical hedge — Avalanche is formalizing its policy machinery to influence how global rulebooks are written, while also trying to limit the fragmentation that complicates cross-border blockchain services.