Solana Policy Institute Files CFTC Letter Proposing Wallet Software Rules, 24/7 Market Standards, and Blockchain Recordkeeping

The Solana Policy Institute submitted a formal letter to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on July 9, responding to the agency's request for information on regulations that may impede fintech and blockchain firms. Signed by CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine and General Counsel Patrick Wilson, it targets three specific areas where the CFTC can act under existing administrative authority without waiting for Congressional action.

That letter responds to RIN 3038-ZA24, published in the Federal Register on June 18, 2026, in which the CFTC asked which current rules, guidance documents, and no-action letters unnecessarily burden digital-asset and blockchain companies working with CFTC registrants. SPI's answer covers wallet software registration, continuous-market compliance timing, and blockchain-based recordkeeping.

Wallet Software Should Not Trigger Introducing Broker Registration

The first and most legally detailed proposal addresses non-custodial wallets and front-end interfaces. Under current CFTC rules, introducing brokers — firms that solicit or accept customer orders for referral to a futures commission merchant — must register with the agency. SPI argues that software helping users prepare and submit their own transactions does not fit that category.

The filing calls out the CFTC's March 2026 no-action letter to Phantom Technologies (Staff Letter No. 26-09) as a useful but limited precedent. That letter told Phantom staff would not recommend enforcement for failing to register as an introducing broker, under specified conditions. No-action letters are staff positions: they bind neither the full Commission nor any other wallet provider.

SPI asks for commission-level guidance that any non-custodial wallet or front-end provider can rely on: a clear statement that software is not an introducing broker or associated person solely because it connects a self-custody wallet, displays market data, or converts user-selected transaction parameters into blockchain instructions. The carve-out the filing proposes would not cover providers that custody assets, exercise trading discretion, make individualized recommendations, or execute trades for users. The SEC Division of Trading and Markets drew the same functional line in its April 2026 staff statement on "Covered User Interfaces"; SPI is asking the CFTC to match it on the derivatives side.

Business-Hours Compliance Deadlines and 24/7 On-Chain Markets

The second proposal targets timing rules in CFTC Part 45, which defines "business day" by excluding weekends and legal holidays, and "business hours" by reference to consecutive hours within those days. Margin events, liquidations, settlement, and collateral movements on blockchain networks happen on Saturdays and at 3 a.m., and each one generates a UTC timestamp and transaction hash at the moment it occurs.

SPI asks the Commission to allow UTC-based or calendar-time compliance standards wherever the existing business-hours framing does not match on-chain market activity. The filing applies the change narrowly: legacy markets that operate on traditional schedules would retain their existing framework, while only on-chain contexts where the timing mismatch creates compliance ambiguity would move to calendar-time standards. Affected compliance categories in the filing include deadlines for incident notices, margin obligations, surveillance, and risk controls.

On-Chain Records as Regulatory Audit Infrastructure

The third proposal asks the CFTC to clarify that on-chain transaction records can satisfy reporting, recordkeeping, and audit-trail obligations rather than requiring parallel off-chain copies of the same data.

The filing invokes the Commission's own standard: records that are complete, durable, retrievable, and usable by Commission staff. Where an on-chain record meets that standard, SPI argues, Regulation 1.31 and the swap recordkeeping requirements of Regulation 45.2 should not require duplication into a separate off-chain system. Private or supervisory fields not appropriate for a public ledger would still require off-chain retention.

The proposal builds on precedent the CFTC itself established: its December 2025 tokenized collateral guidance (Staff Letter No. 25-39) stated that no CFTC regulation requires a particular technology or operational infrastructure, provided applicable regulatory requirements are satisfied. The "as soon as technologically practicable" standard for real-time swap reporting under the Commodity Exchange Act and Part 43 points in the same direction.

Regulatory Tools Already in the CFTC's Authority

SPI specifically names the mechanisms the CFTC can use without statutory changes: interpretive guidance, no-action relief, and exemptive authority under Section 4(c) of the Commodity Exchange Act. A prior Section 4(c) exemptive order, the filing notes, quoted Congress's statement that the authority exists to give the Commission "a means of providing certainty and stability to existing and emerging markets so that financial innovation and market development can proceed in an effective and competitive manner."

That choice matters in context. The CLARITY Act, which would rewrite the statutory framework for digital asset oversight more broadly, faces an August 7 Senate deadline that SPI has called a watershed for whether crypto rules get resolved in this legislative session. SPI's CFTC submission runs on a separate track: changes that can be made now through administrative action, regardless of how the legislative calendar resolves.

Solana SOL$121.57+1.6% has a direct interest in all three proposals. Non-custodial wallets are the primary interface layer for Solana applications. The network's continuous block production makes legacy business-hours timing rules a poor fit for on-chain compliance obligations. And Solana's public ledger, with per-transaction timestamps, execution records, and verifiable state, is the kind of blockchain record SPI argues should satisfy audit requirements without a duplicative off-chain system. SPI had previously pressed the Senate to preserve non-custodial developer protections in the CLARITY Act; the July 9 letter extends that effort into the CFTC's derivatives-specific regulatory layer.