Odaily Planet Daily report: At Korea Blockchain Week, Orca’s Chief Legal Officer Christopher Montagano stated that the SEC’s innovation exemption issued on September 17 creates the conditions to evaluate whether DeFi blockchain infrastructure is more efficient than traditional systems. The exemption provides conditional relief for five years, until September 17, 2031; under this framework, tokenized securities platforms and specific liquidity providers may operate tokenized U.S. stock trading without registering as exchanges or dealers.
Montagano stated that the exemption is specifically designed for AMMs, but it is not a ruling on DeFi as a whole; parties must still comply with sanctions rules and obtain issuer consent to distinguish themselves from permissionless DeFi. Orca has been participating in SEC discussions since 2025 and began trading tokenized stocks in November of the same year.