SEC Division of Corporation Finance Statement on Certain Protocol Staking Activities

On May 29, 2025, the staff (“Staff”) of the Division of Corporation Finance of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission continued its recent pattern of issuing Staff guidance addressing cryptocurrency. The May 29 Staff statement, titled “Statement on Certain Protocol Staking Activities”, provides the Staff’s views on the staking of crypto assets (“Covered Crypto Assets”) that are intrinsically linked to the programmatic functioning of public, permissionless networks that use proof-of-stake (“PoS”) as a consensus mechanism (“PoS Networks”). Covered Crypto Assets are those that are (1) used to participate in and/or earned for participating in a PoS network’s consensus mechanism or (2) used to maintain and/or earned for maintaining the technological operation and security of the PoS network.