A token safe harbor is a rule that lets a crypto token stop being treated as a security once the people behind it are no longer running the show.
Under U.S. securities law, whether a token counts as a security often comes down to a decades-old legal test: does its value depend on the ongoing work of a company or founding team.
Early on, most tokens fail that test, since a small team is still building the network and driving its growth. A safe harbor gives that same token a path to exit securities treatment later, once the project has matured and decentralized.
