According to Techub News, citing crypto.news, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce has made a clear statement on DeFi developer liability at Princeton University's IC3 blockchain camp. She asserted that software developers who publish open-source blockchain code should not be required to comply with federal securities registration rules simply because others may use that code in ways that violate securities laws. Peirce stressed that liability for securities violations should fall on the actual wrongdoers, not on the developers who release code for public use. In her view, developers provide neutral technological tools and cannot control subsequent usage, so they should not bear registration obligations.
During her speech to blockchain academics and developers, Peirce elaborated on the inherent characteristics of decentralized protocols, which can operate without traditional financial intermediaries. She warned that many existing securities regulations were originally designed for centralized intermediaries such as banks and broker-dealers. If regulators apply these rules too broadly to decentralized protocols, core blockchain developers, protocol contributors, and even infrastructure providers could be wrongly brought into a regulatory framework meant for centralized entities, forcing them to comply with registration and compliance requirements that were never intended for them. She urged regulators to respect fundamental architectural differences and adopt more precise rule application, rather than impose legacy frameworks on emerging technologies.