Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, plans to launch the first regulated US onchain perpetual futures markets using the Hyperliquid protocol, subject to regulatory approval.
The proposed service will be aimed at US clients and will initially use Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets. Those are the protocol’s first builder-deployed permissioned perpetual markets.
Trades would be processed through Hyperliquid’s public blockchain, with its onchain order book used to match and record transactions. Payward subsidiaries would oversee the regulatory and administrative responsibilities.
Bitnomial Exchange, a designated contract market regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), would deploy and administer the markets. Bitnomial Clearinghouse, which Payward acquired earlier this year, would clear and settle the contracts.
Client accounts would be held by CFTC-registered futures commission merchant Ninjatrader Clearing. Trading access would be limited to clients onboarded by Ninjatrader and approved on allowlists managed by both Bitnomial and Ninjatrader.
“A U.S. client would open a futures account with Payward’s registered broker and trade new perpetual futures contracts on Hyperliquid, cleared through the same clearinghouse that already supports the crypto perpetual contracts Payward offers U.S. clients today,” said Jon Pham, head of U.S. derivatives at Payward.
Perpetual futures have been widely traded outside the US since 2016. Global trading volume for the products exceeded $85 trillion in 2025, according to CoinGecko’s 2026 State of Crypto Perpetuals Report.
Regulatory restrictions have, however, limited access to perpetual futures for US-based traders.
“Multiple venues run builder-deployed perpetuals on Hyperliquid. One holds 98 percent of their open interest, and no registered U.S. exchange or clearinghouse has deployed a market there,” said Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward.
“Payward intends to be the first, holding the keys and carrying the regulatory obligations.”
Hyperliquid, which launched in 2023, recorded more than $200 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days, according to data from DefiLlama.
Calvin Leyon, head of onchain at Kraken, said the proposed integration showed how decentralised infrastructure could be adapted to meet the requirements of regulated markets.
Payward said Hyperliquid would be the first protocol on which it planned to deploy products for US clients. It also intends to expand into additional products through its existing infrastructure.
If regulators approve the plans, the new onchain perpetual futures contracts will be listed under the rules of Bitnomial Exchange.
Hyperliquid activated its HIP-4 Outcome Markets on mainnet on May 2, 2026, bringing fully collateralised, onchain prediction markets directly into the protocol.
