Payward, the parent company of the Kraken platform, is preparing to take a decisive step for the U.S. crypto derivatives market. The firm has unveiled plans to launch its own perpetual contracts markets, leveraging the technological infrastructure of the Hyperliquid blockchain. This project, which relies on an architecture regulated under the oversight of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), signals a clear ambition to integrate decentralized finance tools within a framework strictly compliant with U.S. requirements.
The system is built on a sophisticated operational structure, made possible by strategic acquisitions totaling over 2 billion dollars. Bitnomial, a Payward subsidiary, will be responsible for market administration and clearing, while the broker NinjaTrader will manage client accounts. In practical terms, U.S. investors will not connect to the existing decentralized Hyperliquid platform as it stands today; instead, they will access isolated, filtered markets deployed on the same blockchain via the HIP-3 technical standard. This screening process is an essential requirement to satisfy anti-money laundering and know-your-customer obligations imposed by authorities.
For Hyperliquid, the stakes are enormous. After recording a notable decline in revenue over recent quarters, the protocol is seeking to capture flows from the U.S. market, which has long been kept at a distance from decentralized platforms. If this collaboration materializes, it would enable Kraken to offer highly liquid financial products—whose global volumes exceed 85 trillion dollars—while maintaining a cautious approach toward regulators. Nevertheless, final approval from the CFTC remains uncertain, particularly as the legal framework for perpetual contracts is currently the subject of intense judicial debate between traditional exchanges and regulatory institutions.
This initiative comes against a backdrop of fierce competition among industry giants vying for dominance in the regulated derivatives segment. While Coinbase is also ramping up efforts to offer innovative financial instruments, Kraken is aiming to gain a competitive edge by betting on Hyperliquid’s infrastructure. The success of this strategy will depend not only on final validation from oversight authorities but also on the ability of these stakeholders to establish a viable technical and legal standard within a U.S. jurisdiction undergoing significant regulatory change.