Payward Will Launch On-Chain Perpetual Futures for US Clients on Hyperliquid

@Payward, the parent company of @krakenfx, has announced plans to launch permissioned on-chain perpetual futures for US clients using the @Hyperliquid HIP-3 protocol. The move would mark a significant step toward bringing regulated, on-chain derivatives access to American traders, a market segment that has largely been shut out of the global perpetuals boom.

A Regulated Route Into On-Chain Perps

Payward intends to route the product through two of its fully regulated subsidiaries: Bitnomial and NinjaTrader. Bitnomial already holds US exchange, clearinghouse, and brokerage licenses, giving the structure a ready-made compliance framework. Payward has presented the proposed structure to the CFTC, though no authorization has been confirmed. Regulatory clearance is still required, and no launch date or commercial terms have been announced.

Under the proposed setup, eligible American customers would trade the contracts through Bitnomial rather than connect directly to Hyperliquid's decentralized platform. US regulators would also expect the regulated venue and its intermediaries to apply customer identification, anti-money laundering, and sanctions controls, requirements that differ meaningfully from the permissionless model most on-chain venues currently operate under.

Hyperliquid's HIP-3 is designed as a system for permissionless, builder-deployed perpetual markets, where a deployer must stake 500,000 HYPE and is responsible for defining and operating its markets, with each HIP-3 exchange maintaining independent margining, order books, and deployer settings. The permissioned market features being tested on the HIP-3 testnet would allow access controls to be enforced on-chain, a key requirement for any US-compliant rollout.

A Large and Growing Market

The commercial rationale is clear. Total notional volume for centralized crypto derivatives hit $85.70 trillion in 2025, with perpetual contracts likely accounting for $51 trillion to $77 trillion of that annual activity. Yet Hyperliquid currently operates as an offshore platform and explicitly restricts access to US users, meaning a successful Payward partnership would represent the first time an on-chain perpetual futures platform operated within American regulatory guardrails.

By pairing Hyperliquid's transparent, publicly available order book with Payward's existing regulatory and margining infrastructure, the partnership aims to bridge decentralized execution with the compliance standards required to serve domestic US traders. Competitors including dYdX and GMX face similar US access restrictions, underscoring how significant a regulated on-chain perps offering in America would be.

Kraken launched regulated perpetuals for eligible American clients through Bitnomial in June, allowing users to manage spot, margin, conventional futures, and perpetual contracts from a Kraken Pro account, laying the groundwork for this broader on-chain expansion.

Sources:
Hyperliquid, Kraken parent explore regulated US futures launch (Crypto.news)
Bloomberg: Hyperliquid in advanced talks with Kraken parent on US perpetuals push (The Defiant)
Crypto perpetual futures market size and 2025 volume data (Kavout)