Six Major Crypto Networks Push SEC to Put Commodity Status in the Rule

Six major blockchain organizations are asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to turn one of its most important crypto classifications into binding rule text.

The coalition includes Chainlink Labs, the Cardano Foundation, Hedera, Aptos Labs, Ava Labs and the Stellar Development Foundation. Together, they want the SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto Assets to say directly that a digital commodity is not itself a security.

That may sound like a technical edit. It is not.

The difference between language in an agency explanation and language in the operative rule can decide how durable that treatment remains when leadership, enforcement priorities or courts change.

Cointelegraph reports that the six groups submitted a joint comment as the public consultation closed, urging the SEC to place its digital-commodity definition inside the regulation rather than leave it in interpretive material. The organizations also asked for clearer treatment of secondary-market transactions and staking-related activity, arguing that developers, exchanges and users need to know when ordinary use of a decentralized network falls outside an investment contract.

The filing does not ask the SEC to abandon its framework. It asks the agency to make a favorable distinction harder to erase, while preserving the line between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Taylor Barr, Chainlink’s head of policy, framed the request around long-term certainty for builders.

.@chainlink is proud to partner with @hedera, @Aptos, @AvaLabs, and @StellarOrg in urging the SEC to codify its digital commodity framework.

Builders need lasting certainty. Codifying this progress would be a meaningful step toward keeping America the home of digital asset… pic.twitter.com/rAjs9C6vdy

— Taylor Barr (@taylorjbarr) October 20, 2026

The practical issue is the asset-versus-transaction distinction. A token can exist as a digital commodity even when a particular offer or sale involving that token creates an investment contract.

The coalition wants the final rule to preserve that distinction clearly instead of leaving market participants to infer it from a preamble or guidance.

That matters for ADA, LINK, AVAX, XLM, HBAR and APT because their networks are used every day outside a fundraising transaction. A clear asset classification could give exchanges, developers and users a more stable starting point without granting any project immunity from fraud laws or transaction-specific securities analysis.

The groups are also seeking a sensible presumption for secondary-market trades. When an ordinary buyer is not relying on continuing managerial promises from an issuer, the coalition argues that the trade should not automatically be treated like the original capital-raising deal.

The Cardano Foundation made the central problem unusually plain: the classification exists in the SEC’s explanation, but not in the rule itself.

Earlier this year, the SEC classified $ADA as a digital commodity, not a security.

However, this classification only appears in the explanation of the new crypto rules, not in the rules themselves.

Six blockchain organizations have asked the SEC to write it into the rules. We… pic.twitter.com/d22ah4aC4s

— Cardano Foundation (@Cardano_CF) October 21, 2026

The coalition also wants the proposed safe harbor to remain voluntary. Choosing not to use a safe harbor, in its view, should not become an admission that a token or transaction was a security in the first place.

The SEC’s Crypto Task Force says its work is intended to draw clearer lines between securities and non-securities, create practical registration paths and protect investors. Writing the classification into the regulation would test whether that stated goal survives the move from policy language to enforceable text.

Nothing is final yet. The SEC can accept, reject or revise the coalition’s requests, and the comment letter itself does not change the legal status of any token today.

Still, the request is significant because six competing ecosystems are making the same narrow argument: put the classification in the rule people must follow instead of leaving it in the accompanying explanation.

If the SEC agrees, the result would not settle every crypto case. It would, however, give major networks a firmer baseline and reduce the risk that a digital commodity becomes a security simply because one transaction involving it once met the investment-contract test.

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