a16z：暗号資産創業者は「CLARITY法案」をどう理解すべきか？

Original title: What builders need to know about the CLARITY Act, what it is and why it matters

Original author: miles jennings, a16z crypto

Original compilation: Jiahuan, ChainCatcher

The Senate Banking Committee just voted in a bipartisan manner to advance the cryptocurrency "market structure" legislation (i.e., legislation regarding market division, regulatory responsibilities, and trading rules), marking a historic moment for the crypto industry.

Why is that? Because the "CLARITY Act for Digital Asset Markets" will finally establish clear rules for blockchain networks and digital assets.

Over the past decade, the United States has lacked clear regulation, distorting markets, suppressing innovation, and exposing consumers to significant risks. CLARITY will put an end to this.

The Securities Act of 1933 established investor protection mechanisms, which underpinned American capital formation and innovation for the following century. The significance of CLARITY is similar—it represents a once-in-a-generation shift in the U.S. financial regulatory landscape, bringing tremendous opportunities.

With its passage through the Senate today, this foundational legislation, crucial to the entire crypto industry, is closer than ever to becoming law.

Whether it's startup founders, consumers, or large traditional financial institutions and investors migrating on-chain, all will benefit.

Next, the bills from both congressional committees will be consolidated into a complete bill for a full Senate vote. If passed, it will go to the House of Representatives for approval, and if successful, it will be sent to the White House for the President's signature.

Why the U.S. Needs CLARITY Now

Over the past decade, the crypto industry has expanded, but the United States has never had a comprehensive regulatory framework. Regulators have had to patch together existing regulations to govern this industry, an approach that has been an outright failure.

This led not only to confusion in legal interpretation and contradictory regulatory stances but also to severe government overreach and abuse of power.

This regulatory uncertainty hasn't just hindered innovation; it has also provided a breeding ground for bad actors. In many highly publicized negative incidents in the crypto space over the past decade, malicious actors easily launched products that exploited regulatory loopholes to exploit consumers.

Meanwhile, responsible builders have faced questionable "regulation by enforcement."

This uncertainty has driven crypto development overseas. When the U.S. fails to provide space for innovation, entrepreneurs seek other jurisdictions, including those that have already implemented more sophisticated regulatory regimes.

The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and the UK's crypto regulations are two examples of America falling behind.

Fortunately for American innovation, no other jurisdiction has fully gotten the regulatory approach right yet. But tailored regulatory frameworks will eventually attract and concentrate entrepreneurial activity, along with the economic value and jobs they create, in these regions.

Imagine if Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, NVIDIA, and Salesforce had all been founded outside the United States. What would the U.S. economy look like?

Therefore, if the U.S. provides regulatory clarity for builders, domestic innovation will greatly benefit. The GENIUS Act (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act) passed by the U.S. in July 2025 is a prime example.

GENIUS established a regulatory framework for stablecoins (digital assets pegged to fiat currency, typically the U.S. dollar), giving rise to a new model: open monetary infrastructure.

After its passage, this act led to unprecedented growth and adoption, benefiting the U.S. economy and the long-term dominance of the U.S. dollar.

When a legal framework is designed to promote both innovation and consumer protection, the U.S. can lead the way, and the world benefits.

Entrepreneurs and early adopters who believe in the promise of crypto, regardless of external perceptions, deserve a clear regulatory framework to realize their vision.

They also need a framework that acknowledges the potential of blockchain networks to drive an important and novel technological platform shift. This transition must transcend the speculative applications fostered by poor policies, allowing builders to operate beyond the initial financial use cases (which are themselves already covered by existing U.S. regulations).

CLARITY is precisely tailored to establish such a clear framework.

How We Got Here

The content of the CLARITY Act is not entirely new. Many of its concepts and principles are derived from existing commodities and securities laws. The bill also evolved from previous legislative iterations, including two "market structure" bills originating in the House:

The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act of 2024, or "FIT21" (HR 4763); and the CLARITY Act for Digital Asset Markets of 2025 (HR 3633).

Similar to the current Senate bill, FIT21 and the House version of CLARITY both aimed to provide blockchain networks with a path to:

· Securely and effectively launch blockchain networks and digital assets in the United States;

· Clarify the regulatory division between the SEC and CFTC in the crypto space, determining whether digital assets are securities or commodities;

· Ensure oversight of crypto trading platforms;

· Further protect U.S. consumers through established rules for crypto transactions.

Two years ago, FIT21 passed with overwhelming bipartisan support (279 votes in favor, 136 against, with 71 Democrats supporting it).

The House version of CLARITY passed in July 2025 with an even higher level of bipartisan support (294 votes in favor, 134 against, with 78 Democrats supporting it).

Combined, these bills sent a strong signal to the Senate: accelerate crypto market structure legislation.

The Senate version of CLARITY builds on the bipartisan momentum in the House and improves upon previous bills in several key areas (detailed below). This bill has been advancing in the Senate for several years, with the fastest pace occurring over the past year:

· June 2022, Senators Lummis and Gillibrand first introduced the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act, the first bipartisan legislative proposal aimed at establishing a comprehensive regulatory framework for the crypto industry.

· July 2025, the Senate Banking Committee (which oversees the SEC) released a discussion draft of legislation within its jurisdiction, merging and unifying the approaches of the Lummis-Gillibrand Act and the House version of CLARITY.

· A request for information was issued to gather feedback and legislative solutions, aiming to balance innovation with maintaining financial stability and protecting consumers.

· September 2025, based on the feedback received, the Senate Banking Committee released a second discussion draft.

· January 2026, the Senate Banking Committee released another iteration, reflecting months of bipartisan negotiations.

· Also in January 2026, the Senate Agriculture Committee released and advanced a market structure legislative draft within its jurisdiction.

· Today (May 14, 2026), the Senate Banking Committee just advanced its portion of the CLARITY Act during a "markup" session.

Why CLARITY Matters: Networks Are Not Companies

For over a century, building companies has been the primary driver of American innovation. This path is well-established: entrepreneurs raise capital, build a business, and if successful, generate profits to reward shareholders.

U.S. law has refined this model, specifying liabilities and emphasizing transparency to align incentives and manage trust in founders and operators.

This framework is suitable for building companies. But it is not suitable for building networks.

Existing legal frameworks presuppose control by a manager and require this control to persist. However, networks have no controlling party. Networks coordinate people, capital, and resources through shared rules, not centralized ownership.

Forcing a framework designed for companies onto networks distorts them into corporate forms. Control becomes re-centralized, intermediaries reappear, and value is extracted from those who depend on the system.

Throughout the digital economy, this dynamic has fostered corporate-style networks—payment systems, e-commerce marketplaces, social platforms, app stores—with immense centralized power, capturing a disproportionate share of the value created by participants.

A ride-hailing user paying $100 for a trip sees the driver receive only a fraction. A musician whose songs are streamed by millions earns only a few cents for every dollar of revenue.

Wherever corporate-style networks dominate, most of the value flows to intermediaries. Traditional corporate law protects these intermediaries and their investors, but users, creators, and workers remain unprotected.

For much of the internet era, this trade-off seemed unavoidable. Open protocols lacked sustainable economic models to compete with the capital and coordination capabilities behind corporate-style networks.

Blockchain changed this.

Blockchains, along with the software protocols deployed on them, have given rise to a new type of system: blockchain networks. These networks are designed for decentralized control, operate according to transparent rules, and exist as shared infrastructure owned and operated by users.

The value of a blockchain network increases with public usage and can be distributed to participants—including those at the network's edge—rather than being captured by a central node.

Blockchain makes it possible to "build networks that truly function like networks, not like companies."

Blockchain technology is at a critical juncture. Previous platform shifts—personal computers, mobile phones, the internet—were among the most important technological innovations in human history. The emergence of artificial intelligence is also rapidly becoming one.

But all these platform shifts ultimately led to highly centralized power and control, where a few determine the fate of countless consumers, creators, and developers who depend on these technologies and services.

As more economic activity becomes digital and more processes are shaped by AI, the question of "who controls the digital systems we rely on" becomes more critical than ever.

If this control remains centralized, so too does the ability to shape outcomes, restrict access, and extract value: companies will dictate how networks operate and decide who benefits from them.

Decentralized blockchain networks offer another path: an infrastructure that no single participant can easily rewrite, censor, or redirect.

In other words, these networks can help decentralize existing platforms, replacing them with networks possessing characteristics of digital public goods—reducing lock-in effects, dispersing control, embedding neutrality, minimizing single points of failure risk, and returning ownership to users.

The CLARITY Act is designed to make this path viable.

After CLARITY moves to the full Senate and updates emerge, we will share more about what it specifically means for crypto builders.

But if CLARITY passes the next and final steps in the legislative process, the U.S. legal framework will finally align with the nature of blockchain networks. Builders will be able to operate transparently, raise capital domestically, and build for the long term without being forced into structural compromises due to regulatory ambiguity.

And as more projects operate within, rather than outside, the U.S. regulatory perimeter, regulators and law enforcement will have better tools to combat the fraud and abuse that have long plagued this industry.

We have already seen what happens when crypto gets viable regulation: the GENIUS Act unleashed a wave of innovation overnight. Today, we already see crypto integration in several mainstream applications, from stablecoins to AI agents—and the best is yet to come.

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