Crypto Groups Jointly Request SEC Rulemaking on DeFi
The DeFi Education Fund, together with the Digital Chamber and several other crypto advocacy organizations, has formally submitted a joint letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), requesting that the SEC initiate a formal rulemaking process for DeFi based on its recent statements. Earlier, the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets explicitly stated that certain software user interfaces used for trading cryptocurrencies do not need to register as broker-dealers—a green light for such activities.
The joint letter urges the SEC to codify this principle into an objective, clear regulatory framework—either through an official announcement or notice-and-comment rulemaking—specifying precisely which activities fall within the definition of “broker,” while expressly excluding infrastructure service providers such as validators, API and RPC providers, oracles, and cloud service providers. This would provide developers with long-term legal certainty, eliminating reliance on temporary guidance. Under current Chair Paul Atkins, the SEC has adopted a proactive and open stance toward digital asset innovation—a sharp contrast to the enforcement-heavy approach of its predecessor—and industry stakeholders are playing a key role in the rulemaking process.
