According to CoinMeta, a16z in conjunction with the DEFI Education Fund ( DEF ) submitted a joint proposal to the crypto task force led by Commissioner Hester Peirce of the US SEC, urging SEC to establish safe harbor rules that clarify that decentralized trading protocols ( DEX ) and their front-end applications do not fall under the defensible presumption of being an “exchange” under the Securities Exchange Act. The proposal outlines “four core criteria” for exemption from registration: the protocol must be non-hosted, autonomously automated, have permissionless access, and possess credible neutrality. The two organizations cited a statement by Commissioner Peirce that “decentralized systems truly driven by automated software do not require exemption,” emphasizing that purely autonomous protocols do not involve intermediary breach of contract or fraud risks and should therefore be granted clear compliance exemptions rather than undergoing cumbersome approval processes. On the same day, a16z also suggested establishing a dedicated registration channel for centralized crypto platforms with intermediary characteristics, allowing them to comply with regulations for trading tokenized securities and mixed securities/non-securities transactions.