Hyperliquid policy arm asks US regulators to classify equity perpetuals as security futures
DeFi & Yields ·
The Hyperliquid Policy Center has petitioned the SEC and CFTC to treat equity-linked perpetual contracts as security futures, a joint-jurisdiction product category, rather than leaving them in regulatory limbo.
The request, attributed to the Hyperliquid Policy Center, asks the two agencies to coordinate rather than compete on oversight of perpetual contracts tied to equities as the protocol's trading volume scales. Security futures already sit under shared SEC-CFTC jurisdiction in US law, and applying that framework to equity perps would give the products a defined regulatory home instead of an ambiguous one split between securities and commodities regulators.
The push comes as Hyperliquid's onchain markets increasingly mirror instruments from traditional finance, where equity is defined by residual ownership claims and shareholder rights rather than the leveraged, cash-settled exposure that perpetual contracts offer. Equity perpetuals let traders take price exposure to a stock without holding the underlying share or its ownership rights, which is precisely why regulators have not settled on a single classification for them.
The Block reported that the Hyperliquid Policy Center is urging the SEC and CFTC to harmonize rules for perpetual contracts, framing the request as part of a broader call for the two agencies to work jointly on derivatives that blend securities and commodities characteristics. That framing aligns with the request to formally designate equity perps as security futures, since such a designation would require both agencies to share supervisory authority rather than one claiming sole jurisdiction.
Two sources in the current cluster describe the same underlying request, with one emphasizing the specific security-futures classification ask and the other placing it in the context of Hyperliquid's push for regulatory coordination as its perpetual futures business grows. Neither account specifies a timeline for any SEC or CFTC response, nor whether either agency has formally acknowledged the petition. What remains unresolved is whether the agencies will act jointly, whether either will claim exclusive jurisdiction instead, and how any resulting rule would apply to other platforms offering similar equity-linked perpetual products.