Kraken's parent company wants to enter the on-chain derivatives business, paying Hyperliquid a $38 million “entry fee”.
Author: TechFlow
TechFlow Highlights: When a parent company of an established centralized exchange (CEX) decides to bow to a decentralized derivatives network (DEX) and act as a "node" within its ecosystem, it marks a shift in pricing power at the underlying infrastructure level.
On October 27, Kraken's parent company Payward announced plans to deploy Hyperliquid's HIP-3 licensed markets in the US market. For compliance, Payward leveraged two traditionally licensed financial institutions; and to secure the on-chain matching infrastructure, they must stake tokens worth nearly $38 million.
Centralized giants are paying an "entry fee" to decentralized infrastructure.
On October 27, Kraken's parent company Payward disclosed a plan subject to regulatory approval: they will become the first CFTC-regulated HIP-3* deployer on Hyperliquid's chain, offering perpetual contract services to US clients.
In this partnership, it is not the retail-familiar Kraken exchange taking the lead, but two "traditional compliance licenses" under Payward.
US regulations for crypto derivatives are extremely stringent. To comply, Payward split this business in half.
Under the plan, Payward's acquisition, Bitnomial (which holds CFTC-issued DCM and DCO licenses), will act as the direct deployer, responsible for creating markets, clearing, and settlement. Meanwhile, another subsidiary, NinjaTrader Clearing (registered as an FCM), will be responsible for holding client accounts and executing KYC.
This means that user identity verification, asset custody, and final clearing all remain within traditional finance compliance entities; while the core order book operations and trade execution are handed over to Hyperliquid's on-chain engine.
For this, Hyperliquid offers an optional add-on called HIP-3* (on-chain whitelist). Through this component, Payward can carve out a "compliance special zone" under absolute control on a permissionless public chain. This satisfies regulatory requirements for real-name systems without undermining the openness of Hyperliquid's native markets.
Stake 500,000 HYPE to Deploy On-Chain Contract Markets
Borrowing a DEX's engine is not free.
According to Hyperliquid's HIP-3 rules, any external entity wanting to deploy its own perpetual contract markets on the mainnet must hard-stake 500,000 HYPE tokens. These funds must be locked for at least 183 days. If the deployer engages in malicious behavior or experiences prolonged downtime, this staked amount will be slashed by network nodes.
At the current price of around $77, this mandatory deposit amounts to $38.5 million.
Payward must use real capital to purchase and lock up these tokens. Furthermore, trading fees for HIP-3 markets are typically double those of native markets, and the vast majority (approximately 97-99%) flows into the protocol's Assistance Fund, used for automated buybacks and burns of HYPE in the secondary market.
Kraken's parent company brings regulated US traffic, while Hyperliquid secures locked deposits and ongoing token deflation expectations.
Purchasing Infrastructure Instead of Reinventing the Wheel
In recent years, the standard move for centralized exchanges has been to issue their own public chains, such as Binance's BNB Chain and Coinbase's Base).
But Payward's choice reveals a new commercial logic: when Appchains like Hyperliquid, which focus on high-performance order books, have built barriers around matching speed and liquidity, renting a ready-made top-tier on-chain engine is far more cost-effective for CEXs than spending money to reinvent a settlement layer.
Payward sets aside its CEX stature and becomes a major client of the DEX. In this transaction, compliance goes to compliance, and compute power goes to compute power.