Code & Chain · Signal Desk

a16z and DeFi Education Fund Urge SEC to Create DEX Safe Harbor, Propose CTP Registration Framework

Original sourcea16z cryptoAdditional: Crypto Times

Summary

a16z crypto and the DeFi Education Fund called on the SEC to establish a safe harbor for decentralized exchanges (DEXs), arguing that qualifying DEXs and DEX Apps should be presumed not to constitute exchange activity under the Securities Exchange Act, even for peer-to-peer trading of tokenized sec…

Key points

  • For DeFi developers, this is a concrete checklist for judging whether their protocol could be deemed an exchange.
  • If adopted, the safe harbor would for the first time provide predictable compliance boundaries for permissionless, automated DeFi trading infrastructure.
  • DeFi teams can self-assess designs against the four criteria and seek clearer rules through the SEC comment process; intermediary platforms may be pushed toward the CTP registration path.

Editorial note

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