Providing Blockchain Security Isn’t a ‘Security,’ Says SEC’s Corporate Finance Division

• The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance issued a statement clarifying that certain PoS staking activities are not considered securities transactions.
• The types of Staking that have been covered by the division include Self-staking, Custodial Staking, and Self-Custodial Staking via Third Party.

On May 29, 2025, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance published a statement clarifying that certain proof-of-stake blockchain protocol “staking” activities are not considered securities transactions under federal securities laws. This means that the act of locking up crypto tokens in a blockchain protocol to earn rewards is not an investment contract, and therefore not subject to SEC jurisdiction.

“Proof-of-stake network protocols are designed to encourage users to voluntarily coordinate and cooperate to secure the network. But uncertainty about regulatory views on staking discouraged Americans from doing so for fear of violating the securities laws. This artificially constrained participation in network consensus and undermined the decentralization, censorship resistance, and credible neutrality of proof-of-stake blockchains.” Hester added in her statement.

There are a few different ways people can participate in protocol staking. First, there’s self-staking, where you take full control, you use your own tokens, and run your own infrastructure. Then there’s self-custodial staking via a third party. In this case, you still keep ownership of your tokens, but you delegate the actual validation work to a third-party node operator. Lastly, there’s custodial staking, which is the most hands-off approach. Here, a platform like a crypto exchange takes control of your tokens and handles the staking for you.

What the SEC Thinks About it

The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance takeaway is pretty clear: protocol staking, as they describe it, doesn’t involve the offering or sale of securities. That means no SEC registration is needed under the Securities Act of 1933 or the Exchange Act of 1934.

Their reasoning relies on the Howey Test, a legal framework used to decide whether something counts as an investment contract, and thus a security. According to the test, an investment contract exists only if there’s an investment of money in a common enterprise, with the expectation of profit, and driven by someone else’s efforts.

The SEC says staking doesn’t check all those boxes. Why? Staking rewards aren’t earned through someone else’s managerial or entrepreneurial work. Instead, they come from simply following the rules baked into the protocol. The people running nodes or custodians handling tokens are just performing routine tasks, not building a business around it.

“Accordingly, it is the Division’s view that participants in Protocol Staking Activities do not need to register with the Commission transactions under the Securities Act, or fall within one of the Securities Act’s exemptions from registration in connection with these Protocol Staking Activities,” the report states.

The SEC also looked at a few other services tied to staking, like slashing insurance, which protects you from penalties, early unstaking options, alternative reward payouts, and aggregation services. These, too, are seen as administrative add-ons—not core activities that would raise red flags under securities laws. In short, these extras don’t change the overall picture: they’re just conveniences, not investments.  Hester Peirce concluded that “I expect that the Division and Crypto Task Force will continue to develop views about security status for other activities, products, and services involving participation in network consensus.”

These remarks come as the regulatory body is working to make the United States more crypto-friendly. Also, the SEC recently decided to shut down its case against Binance after accusing the exchange of breaching the US securities Laws and mishandling customer funds and illegally inflating trading volumes in 2023.