Plume Network sat down with the SEC on September 22 to present a formal framework for how onchain vaults should be treated under U.S. securities law, marking one of the most direct attempts b
Plume Network sat down with the SEC on September 22 to present a formal framework for how onchain vaults should be treated under U.S. securities law, marking one of the most direct attempts by a blockchain project to shape regulatory policy in this space.
The meeting followed a written submission filed with the SEC's Crypto Task Force. The core argument: regulation should attach by function, not by the label "vault."
Plume's proposal draws a clear line between participants who exercise active investment discretion and those who simply maintain neutral protocol infrastructure. Regulation should attach to the vault curator and vault token issuer roles, based on discretion, compensation, and portfolio composition, but not to the neutral protocol developer or administrator.
SEC and CFTC requirements for advisers, commodity trading advisors, investment companies, and commodity pool operators would attach depending on the nature of the assets, the discretion exercised, compensation, and whether U.S. public or offshore distribution is involved. In short, a curator making active investment calls faces a higher regulatory burden than a developer who writes and deploys immutable code.
Broader recommendations cover clarifying onchain vault custody, permitting multi-format funds, enabling secondary markets in tokenized fund shares, modernizing transfer agent registration, and building asset-level AML into tokenized fund interests.
Plume Network is not approaching the SEC as an outsider. The company is an SEC-regulated transfer agent, streamlining the issuance, transfer, and management of tokenized securities.As a registered transfer agent, Plume manages digital securities and shareholder records directly onchain, supporting interoperability with the U.S. Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) settlement network.
The company's Nest vault protocol sits at the center of its product suite. Nest allows fund managers to create vaults backed by regulated financial instruments, with users depositing stablecoins to earn yield from the underlying real-world assets in a permissionless way.Plume has already attracted interest from SEC-registered investment funds, including 40 Act funds.
Salman Banaei, Plume's General Counsel and former SEC and CFTC counsel, spoke to the House Financial Services Committee on why tokenization is becoming a core infrastructure question for U.S. markets. That institutional familiarity with the regulatory process is central to how Plume Network is positioning itself in these conversations.
The September 22 meeting adds another data point to a pattern of active regulatory engagement from Plume, at a time when the SEC is weighing how to apply existing securities law to an asset class that did not exist when those rules were written.
Sources:SEC Crypto Task Force: Plume Network Written Submission on Onchain VaultsCoinDesk: Plume Network Registered by SEC as Transfer Agent for Tokenized Securities
