Carolina Rios is an international crypto regulatory strategist and Web3 legal architect with over a decade of experience advising blockchain ecosystems, virtual asset markets, AI agents, and emerging technology ventures across the UAE, Asia, and Latin America.
She holds a PhD in International Law from Korea University, where her doctoral research produced the first comparative legal study on the regulation of virtual assets across jurisdictions. After living and working in Korea for more than a decade including in roles at Kaia (L1 by Kakao), Korea's largest blockchain ecosystem, and Korea University's Trade Law Center she relocated her practice to Dubai, where she founded SAJA Legal Consultants.
Her work operates at the intersection of legal architecture and regulatory design. She advises Layer 1 protocols, DLT foundations, AI agentic applications, RWA tokenization for institutional market participants, and virtual asset service providers on regulatory frameworks including VARA, ADGM, DIFC, and MiCA, cross-border foundation structuring, token governance, and licensing strategy. Her clients are institutions and ecosystems that require legal architecture capable of operating under sustained regulatory scrutiny.
