After Millions Raised, the SAFT Is Alive But Who Knows How Well

More broadly, the SAFT is an idea that a company that wants to build a service platform that runs on tokens can raise money by selling contracts to receive those tokens once it has been built.

Of course, crypto startups could also raise money by selling equity to venture firms, but that takes away some of their upside, and that's how the SAFT has perhaps pulled away from other competing standards.

"If you want non-dilutive financing, your choices are a SAFT or try to stay outside of the US.".

Still, a lot of SAFTs have been showing up in legal filings in the U.S. of late.

Intangible Labs raised $133 million in a SAFT. Privacy protocol Orchid has stated its intention to sell $125 million in SAFTs.

Aaron Wright of Cardozo Law School, for example, has made a detailed case arguing that the SAFT is itself a security, from contract to token, an argument that looked prescient when earlier this year rumors began to swirl that the Securities and Exchange Commission was going after lots of initial coin offering projects.

Many people believed the SAFT was the common thread across the cases regulators were building.

"I don't think the SAFT ever went away," Radcliffe said.

"Can you put a packaging around a token, and so the package is a security and so the token later on is not. Is that alright? The SEC has not yet spoken on that, and there's controversy around it."

"I think that the risk of the SAFT is not in the SAFT contract, but rather that the tokens upon issuance are securities which would dramatically limit their value in running a network," Radcliffe said.