Blockworks Asks SEC to Make Token Projects Disclose Market-Maker Deals and Promoter Payments

The SEC’s crypto rulemaking is moving through a disclosure-heavy phase, and Blockworks is using the comment process to argue for more detailed visibility around token financing and promotion. Regulation Crypto Assets sits in the middle of a wider effort to define how token projects present information to regulators and market participants in the United States. That makes the filing relevant not just to one company, but to how future crypto fundraising is documented and reviewed.

For token projects, these proposals would move more of the deal structure into the open, including relationships with market makers, exchanges, advisers and influencers. Builders would need to track and present those arrangements in a way that fits the SEC’s framework, which could reshape how offerings are prepared. It also gives investors and counterparties a clearer record of who is paid and how tokens are distributed.

The fight here is over how far disclosure should go and where it should live. Onchain disclosure pushes crypto-native records into the center of compliance, while the SEC’s traditional rulemaking model still assumes formal filings and named intermediaries. The tension is between making token markets more legible and preserving the speed and openness that many crypto projects use to operate.

What remains open is whether the SEC will adopt Blockworks’ requested changes in whole or in part, including the Qualified Onchain Disclosure Agent idea. It is also not yet clear how the agency would define the scope of token projects covered by these disclosure duties or how the new requirements would be enforced. Those details will matter most once the final text of the rule is released.

The move was larger before the first headline than after. That is an observation, not an explanation: the market also moves on things nobody publishes.