According to CoinMeta, the Financial Department of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued new guidelines that clarify that tokens obtained by users through staking ETH do not constitute securities if their function is merely that of a receipt. The guidelines stipulate that these tokens shall not alter the rights associated with the staked ETH or provide additional rewards, and service providers are not allowed to lend, stake, or reuse the deposited tokens. This regulation contrasts with the situation in Kraken of 2023, where a company was fined $30 million and its staking services in the United States were shut down due to claims of promotional yields. The document also points out that announcing a buyback when the network is already operational does not constitute a securities commitment, whereas doing so before the network is fully established may still be considered such.