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- Payward plans to deploy perpetual futures for eligible U.S. clients on Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 infrastructure.
- Bitnomial would operate and clear the markets, while NinjaTrader Clearing would control customer access.
- Hyperliquid is the first protocol Payward plans to use, suggesting the structure could extend to other onchain markets.
Payward’s plan to bring Hyperliquid perpetual futures to U.S. clients is less about importing a decentralized exchange into America than testing whether DeFi infrastructure can sit underneath a conventional regulated derivatives market.
The parent company of Kraken intends to deploy new perpetual futures through Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework.
The orders would be matched and recorded on Hyperliquid’s public blockchain, but Payward-owned entities would control the contracts, clearing and customer relationship. Only accounts onboarded by NinjaTrader and included on the required allowlists would be able to trade.
The proposal remains subject to regulatory approval, but it creates an unusual division: the trading rails can be onchain without the market itself being permissionless.
One Market, Four Different Layers
The structure is easier to understand by looking at where each responsibility sits.
Bitnomial Exchange has held designated contract market status since April 2020, while its clearinghouse received CFTC registration as a derivatives clearing organization in December 2023.
Under the proposed arrangement, Bitnomial would become the HIP-3 deployer, creating and administering the contracts and clearing them through its clearinghouse. NinjaTrader Clearing would carry the client accounts.
Payward says those regulated entities, rather than Hyperliquid, would hold the relevant regulatory obligations.
A U.S. customer therefore would not simply connect a wallet and access Hyperliquid’s existing permissionless perpetual markets. The customer would open a futures account through Payward’s registered broker and trade separate contracts operated within Bitnomial’s framework.
Payward Spent Up to $550 Million Building This Position
That architecture also explains why Payward’s acquisition history matters to the story.
In April, Payward agreed to buy Bitnomial for up to $550 million in cash and stock, valuing Payward’s equity at $20 billion. The transaction was completed on May 1.
The purchase gave Payward control of a U.S. derivatives stack spanning an FCM, DCM and DCO that Bitnomial had spent more than a decade building. Payward said at completion that the infrastructure would support U.S. spot margin first, followed by perpetuals and options.
Payward’s official Bitnomial acquisition announcement
Five months later, the Hyperliquid proposal shows another potential use for that investment.
Rather than replacing decentralized infrastructure with Payward’s own trading technology, the company can use its regulated businesses as the interface between an external protocol and U.S. customers.
That is a different form of vertical integration. Payward owns the regulated exchange, clearing and customer layers, but the underlying trading protocol does not have to belong to Payward.
HIP-3 Makes the Separation Possible
Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework allows third parties to deploy their own perpetual markets on HyperCore.
The deployer is responsible for defining the market, including its oracle and contract specifications, and operating it through functions such as setting oracle prices and leverage limits. Each HIP-3 perpetual DEX has independent margining, order books and deployer settings. Hyperliquid currently requires a deployer to stake 500,000 HYPE to launch a perpetual DEX on mainnet.
For Payward, the important feature is that the market operator and the underlying protocol do not have to be the same entity.
That creates a route for a regulated company to use blockchain-based execution infrastructure while retaining control over the product and who can access it.
Payward Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said the company already lists its own U.S. perpetuals but still intends to deploy on Hyperliquid, framing the strategy around giving customers access to products regardless of who built the infrastructure.
The company says Hyperliquid processed more than $236 billion in perpetual volume over the previous 30 days.
US Access Would Not Merge Onshore and Offshore Liquidity
The distinction between infrastructure and market is particularly important for liquidity.
Bitnomial’s contracts would use Hyperliquid technology, but that does not mean U.S. customers suddenly gain access to the same unrestricted liquidity pool available through existing permissionless Hyperliquid markets.
Payward is proposing new perpetual contracts under Bitnomial Exchange rules, with customer access restricted through regulated onboarding and allowlists.
The result could therefore leave liquidity fragmented between permissionless markets and regulated U.S. contracts even though both use Hyperliquid infrastructure.
For traders, that means the eventual quality of the U.S. product will depend on more than gaining access to Hyperliquid’s technology. Depth, spreads, collateral rules, margin efficiency and the number of active participants in the Bitnomial-deployed markets will determine how closely the trading experience competes with established offshore venues.
Those metrics will be more useful than simply comparing headline trading volumes.
The Regulatory Question Is Narrower Than Building a New Exchange
Payward is also not seeking to create a regulated derivatives business from scratch.
The CFTC already lists Bitnomial Exchange as a designated contract market, while Bitnomial Clearinghouse is a registered DCO. CFTC filings also show that Bitnomial has already updated its rules in 2026 to eliminate expiration on perpetual futures contracts.
The unresolved issue is the Hyperliquid-based structure itself.
Payward says the onchain perpetuals will be listed under Bitnomial Exchange rules subject to regulatory approval, but it has not announced a launch date.
That makes generic estimates for obtaining an entirely new U.S. exchange license less useful here. The relevant test is how regulators treat contracts operated by existing registered entities when their matching and recording infrastructure runs on a public blockchain.
Hyperliquid Is Supposed to Be the First Protocol, Not the Last
Payward says Hyperliquid is the first protocol on which it intends to deploy markets for U.S. customers, with additional products expected through the same open-rails strategy.
That statement makes replication the most important longer-term metric.
If the structure remains limited to Hyperliquid, it provides another regulated route to perpetual futures. If Payward can use the Bitnomial and NinjaTrader stack repeatedly across outside protocols, the $550 million acquisition starts to look like infrastructure for something broader: a regulated gateway between U.S. customers and markets built by third parties.
The implications would extend beyond Payward. Protocols could find themselves competing not only for traders and liquidity, but also for regulated institutions choosing where to deploy financial products.
For now, three things will show whether that model is working: regulatory clearance, liquidity inside the new U.S. contracts and whether Payward actually follows Hyperliquid with another protocol.
If all three happen, the important innovation will not be bringing one DeFi venue into the U.S. It will be proving that a regulated exchange can treat an external blockchain protocol as market infrastructure.
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