One SEC decision is carrying most of today's leaderboard

A single regulatory decision dominated crypto price action on September 17, lifting decentralized exchange tokens and drawing fresh attention to the intersection of traditional finance and onchain infrastructure.

SEC clears the path for onchain stock trading

$UNI surged roughly 19% to near $7.60 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued its long-awaited Innovation Exemption. The SEC granted temporary, conditional exemptive relief to Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs), releasing them from the definition of "exchange" under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, so they can trade tokenized National Market System stocks using permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools. The exemption creates a five-year window for tokenized NMS stocks to trade through permissioned AMMs and liquidity pools on public blockchains.

Uniswap founder @haydenzadams said the relief also covers permissioned pools in Uniswap v4, a detail that directly broadened the scope of the ruling for the protocol's users.

The regulator explicitly excluded synthetic security tokens that are derivatives and do not provide ownership of the underlying shares, a distinction that narrows the exemption to fully backed instruments. The order covers stock tokens that are 1:1 backed by the underlying asset with full voting rights, dividends, and proxy entitlements. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins framed the move as a step to bring US capital markets into the digital age, and noted the commission would seek public comment as it considers longer-term rules.

NEAR Protocol climbs on Confidential Intents milestone

$NEAR gained around 18% to $3.00 on a separate catalyst. near.com announced that it had surpassed $70 million in confidential Total Value Locked, automatically triggering the snapshot for Drop 1 in the NEAR@3.33 Milestone Incentive Program. 333,333 milestone tokens will soon be available for eligible community members to claim.

Eligible participants must maintain a confidential balance above $100 and an active swap history. Rewards remain locked until NEAR's three-day volume-weighted average price reaches $3.33 or higher, at which point milestone tokens convert into $NEAR. Confidential Intents routes transactions through a NEAR private shard, eliminating mempool exposure, predatory MEV, and front-running without the computational overhead of zero-knowledge systems.

The two catalysts, regulatory and protocol-level, reflect how quickly the market is repricing assets tied to real structural developments rather than sentiment alone.

Sources:
SEC.gov: SEC Issues Innovation Exemption to Facilitate Trading of Tokenized NMS Stock
PRNewswire: near.com Confidential TVL Reaches $70 Million
CoinDesk: SEC Rolls Out Innovation Exemption for Tokenized Securities Venues