CFTC Follows SEC With Developer-Friendly No-Action Stance

The CFTC’s Market Participants Division issued a developer-friendly no-action position on September 17, 2026, signaling that qualifying passive-software providers will not face enforcement recommendations for failure to register as an introducing broker, subject to specified conditions. The move lands on the same day the SEC separately issued a conditional innovation exemption for Tokenized Securities Venues, giving DeFi builders a rare dual-agency signal that registration-adjacent relief is achievable without waiting on formal rulemaking. For related coverage, see SEC Prepares for 24/7 Trading as Crypto Sets the Pace.

What the CFTC’s no-action stance actually covers

A no-action position is staff signaling, not law. The CFTC’s Market Participants Division confirmed it will not recommend enforcement against a qualifying provider, or relevant personnel, for failure to register as an introducing broker or as an associated person of an introducing broker. That narrow scope matters: the relief applies to the registration question only, not to a provider’s other obligations under the Commodity Exchange Act. For related coverage, see Ethereum Glamsterdam Upgrade Clears Capacity Rehearsal.

The division scoped the relief to software that facilitates users’ trading with registered futures commission merchants, introducing brokers, and designated contract markets. A provider whose software routes to unregistered counterparties, or that performs active intermediation beyond passive facilitation, falls outside the stated conditions and cannot rely on this position.

The CFTC noted the new position is similar to Staff Letter 26-09 and is now broadly available to qualifying providers, rather than limited to the narrow class of recipients named in the earlier letter. That expansion is the practical upgrade: builders who previously had to seek individual relief now have a general staff-level framework to assess against.

Parallel signals, separate mandates

The SEC’s same-day action addresses a structurally different problem. The commission issued temporary, conditional exemptive relief for Tokenized Securities Venues from the Exchange Act definition of exchange, allowing them to trade tokenized NMS stock using permissioned AMM liquidity pools. The SEC’s exemptions are set to expire five years after publication and require, among other conditions, auditable public smart contracts deployed on a public, permissionless distributed ledger.

SEC tokenized-venue relief duration

5 years

The CFTC and SEC govern different slices of the market: commodities and derivatives versus securities. A DeFi protocol operating across both surfaces, for instance one routing swaps in perpetuals markets while holding tokenized equity positions, cannot treat either agency’s relief as covering the other’s jurisdiction. The ongoing absence of a unified CLARITY Act framework means builders still navigate overlapping mandates on a product-by-product basis.

The SEC’s exemption also carries a public-comment solicitation, which means its final conditions could shift before the five-year clock starts. The SEC’s innovation exemption framework is therefore best read as a draft posture rather than a settled safe harbor for tokenized-venue operators.

The details that determine eligibility

For passive-software builders evaluating the CFTC’s no-action position, the operative question is whether their product crosses from facilitation into intermediation. Software that aggregates liquidity, selects execution venues, or exercises discretion over user order flow is not obviously passive. The CFTC has not published a bright-line test, so providers need to map their product architecture against the conditions in the underlying Staff Letter No. 26-25.

The SEC framework adds a separate layer of conditions for venue operators: auditable smart contracts, permissionless ledger deployment, and the AMM liquidity pool structure are each enumerated prerequisites, not suggestions. Developers building toward tokenized NMS-stock trading will need to satisfy all of them, alongside the time-limited nature of the exemption itself.

Both agencies’ actions confirm that registration relief is available through conditional staff positions, but neither constitutes a blanket developer exemption. Protocol teams should assess whether their specific activity, counterparty set, and software architecture satisfy the stated conditions before treating either announcement as compliance clearance.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency and digital asset markets carry significant risk. Always do your own research before making decisions.