SEC Creates Five-Year Conditional Path for Tokenized U.S. Stocks on Public Blockchains

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Sept. 17 created a five-year, conditional path for certain tokenized shares to trade on public blockchains without the trading venue registering as a national securities exchange. The order is temporary and narrow, but it marks a notable shift: for the first time, the agency has set out a general framework for a category of onchain venues to host trading in some U.S. stocks under an exemption.

Why that matters is the distinction the SEC drew between real shares and crypto lookalikes. The order covers only tokenized National Market System stocks that give holders the same rights and privileges as the underlying shares, including dividends, voting rights and liquidation rights. It does not cover synthetic tokens that merely track a stock’s price, and it excludes tokenized security-based swaps.

The SEC’s order, issued under the title “Order Granting Temporary Conditional Exemptive Relief … for the Use of Certain Distributed Ledger Trading Venues for Tokenized NMS Stocks and from the Definition of ‘Dealer’ … for Certain Liquidity Providers,” creates two temporary exemptions.

The first is for what the SEC calls a Tokenized Securities Venue, or TSV. “Specifically, the Commission hereby issues to ‘Tokenized Securities Venues’ (‘TSVs’) an exemption from the definition of ‘exchange’ in section 3(a)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,” the order says.

The second is a narrower exemption from the Exchange Act definition of “dealer” for certain proprietary liquidity providers participating in automated market maker, or AMM, pools. AMMs are software-based trading systems that use liquidity pools instead of a traditional order book.

The relief runs for five years, through Sept. 17, 2031, unless the SEC changes it earlier. The agency described the move as interim relief while it considers longer-term rulemaking and seeks public comment.

The conditions are extensive. To qualify, the distributed-ledger applications used by a TSV must be auditable, public and deployed on a public, permissionless blockchain. A venue relying on the exemption must be a U.S. person and must set standards for permissioned participation in AMM liquidity pools. The order also preserves anti-fraud and anti-manipulation rules and adds disclosure, recordkeeping, operational and reporting requirements.

Among those reporting conditions is a public transaction feed. A TSV must publish machine-readable data covering the prior 30 days of transactions and update that feed within 10 minutes after each trade.

The order also has market-structure implications. The SEC said TSVs operating under the exemption would not be treated as national securities exchanges for purposes of Regulation NMS, the core SEC framework for how U.S. stock markets interact. That means some NMS requirements, including parts of the trade-through and quotation-collection rules, may not apply because the SEC said they may be impractical for AMM-based pools.

That carveout is a central part of the experiment. The agency is effectively allowing a limited form of onchain market structure for rights-bearing tokenized shares while keeping core investor-protection rules in place.

Solana enters the story because it already has tokenized-share infrastructure and issuer examples that could fit this new framework, not because the SEC order singled it out. On Sept. 23, Solana’s website published a commentary article saying the SEC action means “stocks go onchain” and arguing that the network is technically ready. The company described the moment in sweeping terms, writing: “This is not a plan. It is running.”

There is some factual basis for Solana’s relevance. Superstate launched its tokenization platform, Opening Bell, in May 2025. Galaxy Digital announced tokenized GLXY Class A shares on Solana via Superstate on Sept. 3, 2025. Forward Industries disclosed tokenization arrangements in SEC filings in September 2025 and said in a Dec. 18, 2025, press release that its SEC-registered shares were “now live on the Solana blockchain” through Superstate.

Still, the SEC order is the real news, and it should not be read as confirmation that any specific Solana-based venue is already operating under the exemption. The order creates a route for eligible venues, subject to conditions and compliance, rather than granting blanket approval to any existing platform.

The SEC is now asking for comment as it weighs whether to turn this temporary framework into something more permanent. The same day the order was released, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Market Participants Division, the arm of the U.S. derivatives regulator that oversees market participants, issued Staff Letter No. 26-25. That letter extended no-action relief to a broader class of “passive software” providers, another sign that U.S. regulators are testing how existing market rules should apply to onchain financial infrastructure.