Overview

• Led by the DeFi Education Fund, a coalition of 114 companies and advocacy groups sent an August 27 letter to the Senate Banking and Agriculture committees.
• Signatories including Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, a16z, Uniswap Labs, Solana Labs, Grayscale, DCG and major trade groups warned they cannot support a final market‑structure bill without nationwide safeguards for software developers and non‑custodial providers.
• The coalition asks Congress to preserve protections for open‑source work, recognize public blockchains as neutral infrastructure, protect self‑custody and peer‑to‑peer transactions, and preempt conflicting state laws.
• The push follows a federal conviction of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm and seeks clarity that publishing or maintaining decentralized software does not make developers regulated intermediaries.
• The House passed its CLARITY market‑structure bill earlier this year, and Senate drafts face near‑term committee deadlines, even as a senior DOJ official recently said prosecutors will not target developers of truly decentralized software.