Payward, the company behind Kraken, has outlined plans to give eligible U.S. customers access to perpetual futures that settle and match on a public blockchain rather than a conventional centralized venue.
The first destination would be Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework, which lets a third party create, own, and administer permissioned perpetual markets on the protocol’s on-chain order book.
The proposal is not a free-for-all listing of every existing Hyperliquid contract. Bitnomial Exchange, Payward’s CFTC-designated contract market, would act as the deployer.
It would design the contracts, retain administrative control, and, together with Bitnomial Clearinghouse, clear and settle the trades.
NinjaTrader Clearing, Payward’s registered futures commission merchant, would hold customer accounts.
Only clients who open a futures account through that broker and appear on both Bitnomial’s and NinjaTrader’s allowlists would be able to participate.
In short, matching and public recording would happen on Hyperliquid’s chain; regulatory responsibility, customer onboarding, and clearing would stay with Payward’s licensed U.S. entities.
Company executives framed the move as an effort to close a long-standing gap.
Perpetual futures have been a core product for crypto traders outside the United States since 2016 and generated more than $85 trillion in notional volume worldwide in 2025.
Hyperliquid itself processed more than $200 billion in the most recent 30-day window and ranked as the most active on-chain perpetuals venue last year.
Until now, no registered U.S. exchange or clearinghouse had deployed a market on the protocol.
Payward already lists its own CFTC-regulated crypto perpetuals for eligible domestic clients through the same Bitnomial stack; the new initiative would add an on-chain execution layer while keeping the same clearinghouse and brokerage relationships.
Access would remain tightly controlled. American users could not simply connect a wallet and trade.
They would first need an approved futures account and inclusion on the dual allowlists.
The company has not published a launch date, fee schedule, or expected volume, and the entire structure is subject to regulatory approval.
Contracts, if authorized, would be listed under Bitnomial Exchange rules.
Payward presented the project as part of a broader “open rails” strategy: a shared infrastructure layer that can support products built by others as well as its own.
Hyperliquid is described as the first protocol slated for this U.S. on-chain rollout, with additional products expected to follow the same model.
Leadership argued that giving US clients a regulated path to a leading on-chain venue expands choice and keeps domestic markets from lagging products already available elsewhere.
The announcement arrives months after Payward completed its acquisition of Bitnomial, which supplied the full CFTC-licensed stack of exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage licenses.
That acquisition already enabled the June 2026 launch of regulated US perpetual futures on Kraken Pro.
The Hyperliquid plan would reuse that stack while shifting the matching engine onto a public blockchain.Whether regulators sign off, and how quickly, remains unknown.
If approved, the structure would represent one of the first attempts to wrap a high-volume on-chain derivatives protocol inside a U.S. designated contract market and derivatives clearing organization while restricting participation to fully onboarded, allowlisted customers.