SEC Eases Pressure on DeFi Once Again

“matching,” you’d be treated like Nasdaq — subject to SEC oversight.

This caused shockwaves across the crypto community.Can you imagine an open-source smart contract being required to file quarterly reports like Goldman Sachs?Or a DAO being forced to comply with traditional securities disclosure rules?It was like using Wall Street’s yardstick to measure on-chain experiments.

The most controversial part of the proposal was its legal language, which blurred the line between “developer” and “controller.”Some clauses attempted to hold smart contract deployers or contributors liable as operators of a securities exchange — even if they merely uploaded code.

This triggered massive concern across the open-source community, GitHub contributors, and DeFi builders. Because if writing code equals running a securities exchange, then the entire DeFi dev ecosystem could collapse.

Now, this proposal has also been withdrawn.This signals a change in tone from U.S. regulators: a shift from fear-based control to instrument-based rationality.