a16z and DeFi Education Fund propose SEC safe harbor for DEXs

a16z and the DeFi Education Fund have submitted a joint proposal to SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, advocating for a safe harbor rule that would establish a rebuttable presumption that decentralized exchange (DEX) protocols and their front-end interfaces do not qualify as exchanges under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. In a separate letter dated September 14, a16z also urged the SEC to create a registration framework for centralized crypto trading platforms, modeled after the 1998 Alternative Trading System (ATS) rules.