Six organisations behind major crypto networks asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 20 October, the last day of comments on its proposed Regulation Crypto Assets, to write the "digital commodity" category into the rule itself. Chainlink Labs, the Cardano Foundation, Hedera, Aptos Labs, Ava Labs and the Stellar Development Foundation signed a joint letter, Cointelegraph and Journal du Coin reported on 21 October. The tokens of their networks, LINK, ADA, HBAR, APT, AVAX and XLM, are treated as digital commodities today only in SEC guidance, which the agency can narrow or withdraw without a public consultation.
The joint letter itself was not on the SEC’s public comment page for file S7-2026-27 when we searched it again on the evening of 21 October. One of the signatories did file its own letter there, and it describes the joint one. The Stellar Development Foundation’s comment, signed by chief legal and policy officer Candace Kelly and dated 20 October, says SDF joined a letter "on behalf of a coalition of foundations supporting Layer 1 blockchains" and lists what that coalition asked for. It does not name the other members. Until the joint text is published, this is the nearest primary account of it, and it goes further than the press reports.
The six are not fighting the proposal. Stellar’s letter calls it "a significant step toward a clear and workable framework for crypto assets." They want one part of it made harder to undo.
Coindaro’s report on the close of the comment period covered Nasdaq, the community banks, Ripple and the Blockchain Association, and Hyperliquid’s five requests had their own piece. This is a separate filing that neither of those reports mentioned.
What the six blockchain groups asked the SEC to change
According to Stellar’s letter, the coalition asks the SEC to do five things in the final rule:
- Add definitions of the "2026 Interpretation" and of "digital commodity" to section 228.100 of the regulation, using the interpretation’s own wording.
- Confirm in section 228.101 that a digital commodity is not a security, and that a token sold as part of an investment contract does not become a security itself.
- Presume that a sale of a digital commodity by someone other than the issuer, on the secondary market, involves no investment contract, unless the issuer still has outstanding promises of essential managerial efforts. The SEC is also asked to consider relief covering the whole class of tokens the interpretation identifies, without each one filing a Form TR.
- Confirm that using the Rule 400 safe harbor, including filing Form TR, is not an admission that an investment contract ever existed, and that choosing not to use it creates no presumption either.
- State in the adopting release that the regulation does not change the interpretation’s classifications or the split of powers between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The press accounts are narrower. Journal du Coin and Genfinity reported the first two requests: move the definition from the preamble into the operative text, and say a digital commodity is not a security. Cointelegraph also mentioned secondary-market trades and the treatment of staking. Stellar’s letter supports the secondary-market part. It says nothing about staking in its summary of the coalition’s asks, so that point rests on Cointelegraph alone.
Taylor Barr of Chainlink announced the effort on X, according to Genfinity, and Cointelegraph ran a screenshot of his post. The Cardano Foundation summed up the problem in a post quoted by CaptainAltcoin: the classification "only appears in the explanation of the new crypto rules, not in the rules themselves."
SEC digital commodity label: why the preamble can be withdrawn
The SEC’s proposal was published in the Federal Register on 21 August 2026 (91 FR 54510), with comments due by 20 October. It offers a startup exemption of up to $5 million over four years and a fundraising exemption of up to $75 million per 12 months, in two tiers. It also creates a safe harbor, Rule 400: once an issuer certifies that its essential managerial efforts are complete or have stopped, the token is no longer part of an investment contract. Antifraud rules keep applying.
The "digital commodity" label is older. On 17 March 2026 the SEC and the CFTC published a joint interpretation that sorts crypto assets into five categories. The SEC’s announcement names them: digital commodities, digital collectibles, digital tools, stablecoins and digital securities. Chairman Paul Atkins said then that most crypto assets are not themselves securities, and the signatories read the digital commodity category as one of those outside securities law. Genfinity, citing the law firm WilmerHale, reports that a footnote of the interpretation lists 16 assets tied to CFTC-regulated futures, among them APT, AVAX, ADA, LINK, HBAR and XLM. Stellar’s own letter says XLM is recognised there as a digital commodity.
The proposal turns only part of that interpretation into rule text. As Stellar’s letter reads it, Rule 400 codifies the section on when an investment contract ends. The digital commodity classification, "on which the rest of the framework depends", stays in the preamble, the long explanatory text that comes before the rules. So does the treatment of free distributions. The letter’s conclusion: "Both would remain guidance that could be narrowed or withdrawn without notice and comment."
An interpretation is the agency’s reading of the law, and a later commission can publish a different reading. A rule adopted through notice and comment can only be changed by another rulemaking, with a new proposal, a public comment period and a vote. For a token issuer, an exchange listing LINK or a custodian holding XLM, it is the difference between a position that can change with the next statement and one that takes months of procedure to reverse.
Congress has not settled the question either. Our explainer on how the SEC and CFTC are writing US crypto rules while the CLARITY Act is stalled sets out why the two agencies are filling the gap with their own texts, and why those texts are easier to change than a law.
Security or digital commodity: what the label changes for a token
Under US law, a security includes an "investment contract". Courts test for one with the Howey test, named after a 1946 Supreme Court case: money invested in a common enterprise, with an expectation of profit from the efforts of others. When a token sale meets that test, the seller has to register the offering with the SEC or use an exemption, and give investors disclosure. Platforms that trade securities need to be registered as exchanges or brokers.
A commodity sits in a different legal box. The CFTC, which has opened a consultation on federal rules for retail crypto trading, oversees futures and other derivatives on commodities and can pursue fraud and manipulation in the underlying market. Buying and selling the commodity itself has no registration regime comparable to the one for securities.
The second and third requests target a confusion that has run through US crypto cases for years. A project can sell tokens to early investors with promises to build the network, and that deal can be an investment contract. The coalition wants the rule to say the contract is the security, not the token. Once a digital commodity changes hands on an exchange between people who are not the issuer, the trade would be presumed to involve no investment contract at all.
For holders, nothing changes tonight. LINK, ADA, HBAR, APT, AVAX and XLM keep the status the March interpretation gave them, and none of the outlets that covered the letter reported a price reaction. What the six want is for that status to be harder to take away.
Six networks behind one filing, and Stellar’s extra asks
Stellar’s letter describes the group as a coalition of foundations supporting layer-1 blockchains, the base networks on which tokens and applications run. Cardano, Hedera, Aptos, Avalanche and Stellar fit that description. Chainlink is better known as an oracle network that feeds outside data to other chains; our profile of Chainlink explains how it works. Avalanche is represented by Ava Labs, the company that built it. One post on X named "Avalanche" as the signatory, but the organisation on the letter is Ava Labs.
Stellar also filed on its own account, on top of the joint letter. Its comment asks the SEC to confirm that developer grants, bug bounties and hackathon prizes, which it calls "ecosystem distributions", are pay for work and not investment contracts, and to keep them out of the dollar caps of the two exemptions. It also wants the rule text to say that maintaining a working network, through security patches, upgrades and published roadmaps, is not an essential managerial effort. The foundation says it generally supports the comments of The Digital Chamber and the Blockchain Association.
No digital commodity category in Europe
Readers in the EU are under a different system. MiCA sorts crypto-assets into e-money tokens, asset-referenced tokens and other crypto-assets, and tokens that are financial instruments fall under existing securities law instead. There is no US-style "digital commodity" class. In France the AMF supervises crypto service providers, in Italy Consob and the OAM register. The SEC letter has no direct effect on European holders.
Next: the SEC reads the comments, with no date set
The SEC now has to review the comments and decide what goes into a final rule. No timetable has been announced, Journal du Coin notes, and a final rule needs a commission vote. The SEC’s public comment listing ran to seven pages on 21 October; we have not counted the letters.
Whether the SEC will move the definition into rule text is open. So is the exact wording of the joint letter, including whether it names tokens beyond the six; that can be checked once it appears on the docket. The SEC has not commented on the letter.