The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance on 5 August issued a staff statement confirming that many liquid staking activities and the transferable “receipt” tokens they generate are not securities under federal law. Participants who deposit cryptoassets in proof-of-stake networks and receive tokens representing the underlying assets and staking rewards therefore do not have to register those transactions with the agency, provided no ongoing managerial or entrepreneurial effort is required from a third party. The clarification applies to both protocol-level and custodial liquid-staking services, lifting a significant regulatory cloud for market leaders. Ethereum platform Lido, which holds about $31 billion in ether, and Solana-based provider Jito—issuers of widely used tokens such as stETH and JitoSOL—are among the firms expected to benefit. The SEC also said that secondary-market trading of the tokens, by itself, does not constitute a securities transaction. Lawyers and fund sponsors said the guidance removes a key obstacle to incorporating staking features in planned spot ether exchange-traded funds, an issue the SEC had highlighted during its review of multiple applications. The statement is the latest in the Commission’s broader “Project Crypto” push to delineate which digital-asset activities fall outside its jurisdiction, following earlier exemptions for self-custodial staking in May. The SEC cautioned that the relief is limited to the fact patterns described and that participants must still comply with anti-fraud, anti-money-laundering and other federal requirements.