Hyperliquid said on Oct. 26 that it is building an opt-in access-control mechanism that would let market deployers decide who can trade on their markets. The decentralized perpetuals exchange said Payward, Kraken’s parent company, plans to become the first Commodity Futures Trading Commission-regulated firm to use the setup, subject to regulatory approval.
In a post on X, Hyperliquid outlined a structure in which Payward would keep the full stack in-house. If regulators approve the arrangement, Bitnomial, which is registered with the CFTC as both an exchange and a clearinghouse, would launch and operate the markets and clear and settle trades executed on them.
Client accounts would sit with NinjaTrader Clearing. Hyperliquid said the entity is part of Payward and is registered with the CFTC as a futures commission merchant.
HIP-3* adds permission settings to the existing deployment framework
The feature is called HIP-3*. Hyperliquid described it as an addition to HIP-3, the framework that allows outside builders to deploy their own perpetual futures markets on the exchange.
At the center of the proposal is an onchain allowlist controlled by the deployer or its sub-deployers. Hyperliquid said the feature is optional, only extends HIP-3, and will not change markets that are already live.
Testnet only for now, with no launch date
The first version is running only on testnet. Hyperliquid said the specifications there are preliminary and may change based on feedback, and that HIP-3 will support the permissioned-market settings in a future network upgrade.
Neither Hyperliquid nor Payward has given a date for live trading, and neither has published contract details.
Hyperliquid wrote that it sees itself as a neutral infrastructure layer with the goal of supporting large parts of the financial system. Under the framework, each deployer would keep control of its own markets and remain responsible for them.
Payward first laid out the plan in September
Payward first announced its intention on Sept. 16. In that release, the company said trading would be limited to accounts onboarded by NinjaTrader and included on allowlists maintained by both NinjaTrader and Bitnomial.
The same release said Payward had 6.6 million funded accounts as of June 30.
Co-CEO Arjun Sethi said at the time, 「Payward intends to be the first, holding the keys and carrying the regulatory obligations.」
On Oct. 27, Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan welcomed the development on X. He wrote, 「We’re honored that they are building on Hyperliquid to bring the next evolution of perpetual markets to the United States.」