Crypto groups propose decentralised exchange safe harbour

Andreessen Horowitz and the DeFi Education Fund submitted a proposed safe harbour to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for certain decentralised exchanges and their interfaces. The letter focuses on software that allows users to arrange transactions themselves without a traditional market operator.

The groups propose objective conditions separating neutral technical infrastructure from services that create the risks addressed by exchange regulation. Their framework describes autonomous protocols without unilateral control over trading rules, alongside interfaces that display information and provide access without controlling the underlying protocol.

The submission suggests beginning with staff guidance and potentially following with formal rulemaking. It is an industry proposal, so it does not itself exempt any service from registration. The requested distinction concerns how an application operates, rather than a blanket exclusion for every product described as decentralised.