TLDR
Crypto advocacy group Coin Center is pressing the US Senate to keep strong liability protections for non-custodial crypto developers in a key regulatory bill.
- Coin Center is lobbying the Senate Banking Committee to advance the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act (BRCA), which says non-custodial developers are not money transmitters.
- The push follows high profile convictions of Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet developers, which raised fears that open source coders could face prison for others misuse of their code.
- The bill is still in committee, and its fate will likely be tied to broader market structure legislation like the CLARITY Act, so watch markups and any attempts to weaken the protections.
Deep Dive
1. What The Developer Shield Would Do
Coin Center is urging the Senate Banking Committee to move forward with the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, originally introduced by Rep. Tom Emmer and now refiled in the Senate by Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden.
The bill would clarify that software developers and blockchain infrastructure providers who never control user funds are not money transmitters under federal law, meaning they should not be regulated like payment processors or banks. Crypto.news and Cointelegraph both report that Coin Center warns weakening this language would chill US blockchain innovation by keeping developers under constant threat of prosecution.
For protocol and wallet builders who ship non-custodial code, this would draw a clearer line between writing software and running a financial service.
2. Why The Lobbying Is Intensifying Now
Coin Center explicitly links its campaign to recent criminal cases. In 2025, Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm and Samourai Wallet founders Keonne Rodriguez and Will Lonergan Hill were convicted for conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, with multi year prison sentences reported in coverage of the BRCA debate.
Coin Centers policy director argues that blockchain developers are analogous to internet service providers or cloud hosts, which are not prosecuted when criminals misuse their systems. Without a statutory shield, open source crypto developers worry that simply publishing code could be treated as running an unlicensed money service.
Legal ambiguity is already being tested in court, so the industry is trying to lock in protections before more cases set harsh precedents.
3. How This Fits Into Bigger US Crypto Rules
Trade focused coverage notes that the Senate is simultaneously working on broader market structure legislation, including the CLARITY Act, which would split oversight between the SEC and CFTC and formalize crypto intermediaries obligations.
The BRCA sits alongside this package as a narrower clarification targeted at non-custodial developers and infrastructure providers. It has not yet been marked up or voted on in Senate Banking, and Coin Center is specifically warning against stripping or softening its developer protections during negotiations.
The most important signals to watch are committee markups, amendments around money transmission definitions, and whether BRCA style language makes it into any final market structure bill.
Conclusion
The developer shield fight is about where US law draws the line between writing open source crypto code and operating a regulated financial service.
If BRCA style protections survive the Senate process and are paired with a broader market structure bill, US based protocol and wallet teams could get clearer guardrails to build within. If those protections are diluted or dropped, the chill from recent prosecutions may keep more serious development and deployment offshore.
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