The SEC’s proposed Regulation Crypto framework is moving into focus because it touches one of the hardest questions in digital-asset regulation: how should decentralized finance be treated when the law was built for identifiable intermediaries?

That question has been sitting unresolved for years.

Centralized exchanges, brokers, funds, custodians, and issuers are easier for regulators to understand. There is a company, a management team, a platform, a customer relationship, and usually a clear point of responsibility. DeFi is not that simple. A protocol may involve open-source code, governance token holders, front-end operators, liquidity providers, validators, developers, and users spread across the world.

That is why any SEC framework…