Senator Cynthia Lummis said the updated Clarity Act text carries more than 100 changes that Democrats requested. She urged them to help pass the bill.

Senate Republicans released an updated CLARITY Act text that runs 630 pages, 14 more than the July 22 draft. A procedural vote, now four days later, decides whether the bill reaches the Senate floor.

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What Changed in the Clarity Act’s September 10 Draft Text

The bill still runs four divisions and 103 sections. What changed is buried inside roughly a dozen of them, all in the Banking and Agriculture titles.

BeInCrypto compared the two Senate substitute texts line by line. The September draft differs from the July draft in 14 of its 103 sections. Those sections contain 104 discrete edits, though only 28 exceed 8 words.

The heavy lifting is in Section 20209, the DeFi safe harbor, which balloons from 285 words to about 2,200. Validators, node operators, and anyone publishing wallet software get a full carve-out from the Commodity Exchange Act. 

Front-ends, governance systems, liquidity pools, and the upkeep of that wallet software are shielded only from spot-market rules. 

For “decentralized-in-name-only” protocols, the CFTC must write rules on how controllers comply, a mandate rather than an automatic registration trigger, and the code itself is never required to register. Treasury then writes matching anti-money-laundering rules for whoever the CFTC pulls in.

The quieter story sits in the preemption clause. State securities, commodities, and digital asset law no longer applies to those activities, and the section applies to conduct before enactment. State fraud, manipulation, and AML powers survive, so the fight moves to where licensing ends, and fraud begins.

Division C, the ethics title Democrats want changed, is untouched

What Republicans Left Alone, and Who Is Still Voting No

The smaller edits sit outside the DeFi title. Credit unions get a clearer footing, keyed to definitions from the GENIUS Act, though the text stops short of expanding their authority into brokerage or dealing.

CFTC spot oversight now covers every payment stablecoin rather than only those from licensed issuers. The bill reaches transactions on or through an entity registered with the Commission. States also keep their fraud-enforcement powers against registrants under Section 20207.

The ethics title is not the only thing Republicans left alone. Section 10404, which bars yield on payment stablecoins, is identical to the July version. So is Section 10604, the developer protections known as the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act.

Those two carry substantial opposition. The American Bankers Association and 60 other banking groups asked Senate leaders to tighten the rewards rules. They warned of deposit flight from community banks.

Republican Senators Josh Hawley and Jerry Moran have raised concerns about that. Democrats, meanwhile, have tied their support to stronger ethics terms covering President Donald Trump’s crypto holdings.

Senators vote Tuesday afternoon on whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed. 60 votes are needed.

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Source: BeInCrypto