Senate Panel Advances CLARITY Act for XRP, Solana, Hyperliquid

The Senate Banking Committee approved the Crypto Market Structure Bill, known as the CLARITY Act, on Thursday, advancing the legislation to the full Senate. The bill would create pathways for certain tokens to be treated as commodities or to receive DeFi safe-harbor protections under specified conditions.

Committee lawmakers added more than 100 amendments during the markup after months of negotiation. A Senate floor vote will require 60 votes to clear the chamber, and any final law must be reconciled with the House version.

Key provisions include a grandfather clause that can fast-track commodity status for tokens linked to approved or pending exchange-traded products, a decentralization test to determine whether a blockchain qualifies as a mature network, and safe-harbor protections for non-custodial decentralized finance actors that limit broker-dealer registration obligations while preserving anti-fraud enforcement.

XRP is positioned to benefit from the grandfather clause because tokens tied to approved or pending ETFs could be designated as commodities without completing the full decentralization test. XRP has faced enforcement scrutiny in the past over secondary-market sales. XRP traded about $1.51, up roughly 7 percent at the time of reporting. One online user wrote, “Regulation is aligning… and that’s exactly what XRP has been waiting for. The rails are being built.”

Solana meets the bill’s decentralization thresholds and would qualify for protections under the proposed DeFi safe-harbor framework. The network hosts a large decentralized finance ecosystem by transaction volume, including perpetuals, staking products and tokenized real-world assets. Solana’s native token traded near $92.70, up about 1.7 percent at the time of reporting.

Hyperliquid, a layer-one blockchain that operates a fully on-chain perpetuals exchange, aligns with the DeFi safe-harbor provisions because its trading venue is non-custodial and on-chain. Those features would limit broker-dealer registration exposure for the protocol’s developers, validators and liquidity providers while leaving anti-fraud authority intact. The token HYPE traded around $43.86, up about 12 percent in the 24 hours after the committee vote. Custody provider BitGo wrote that institutions can connect to the trading venue with the firm’s “secure, regulated custody and seamless integration.”

The bill does not immediately change the legal status of any token. Final outcomes will depend on the Senate floor vote, any amendments adopted there, and reconciliation with the House bill. Lawmakers have flagged that language around stablecoin yields and the scope of DeFi protections could be revised during further negotiations.

Market participants and financial firms are monitoring the floor debate and reconciliation process for changes that could affect token classifications and the regulatory treatment of decentralized finance.