The crypto industry is entering another phase of infrastructure development, with two developments highlighting how established financial platforms are increasingly connecting with permissionless blockchain markets.
Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has announced plans to bring onchain perpetual futures to U.S. clients through Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 markets, while Circle has launched the public mainnet of its Arc blockchain, with Pump.fun confirming support for Arc-based tokens.
Payward’s Hyperliquid initiative is particularly significant because it creates a bridge between U.S. users and an onchain derivatives architecture.
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Payward said it intends to deploy perpetual futures markets for American clients beginning with Hyperliquid HIP-3 markets, which are builder-deployed permissioned perpetual markets.
The development comes as Payward expands beyond its traditional exchange model. The Kraken parent company has recently increased its involvement in tokenized assets and market infrastructure, including a $100 million investment from Nasdaq Ventures and cooperation on Nasdaq Equity Tokens.
The Hyperliquid initiative therefore fits into a broader strategy of connecting conventional financial-market infrastructure with blockchain-based trading. For Hyperliquid, the partnership could also represent another step toward expanding the reach of its onchain market architecture.
HIP-3 allows builders to introduce permissioned perpetual markets, potentially creating markets that are more closely aligned with regulatory and jurisdictional requirements than fully open derivatives venues.
At almost the same moment, Circle has taken another major step in blockchain infrastructure with the launch of Arc’s public mainnet on September 16.
Circle describes Arc as an open Layer 1 designed for financial markets, real-time money movement and agentic economic activity. The network uses USDC for transaction fees, offers sub-second finality and is designed to support applications involving stablecoin payments, foreign exchange and tokenized assets.
The launch also carries an institutional dimension. Circle previously announced founding validators including BlackRock, DTCC, Galaxy, ICE, Mastercard, Visa, Standard Chartered and other financial institutions. More than 100 institutional and ecosystem builders had already been working with Arc before its public launch.
Yet Arc is not launching into an exclusively institutional environment. Pump.fun has announced that Arc will be supported on its application from day one, allowing users to trade Arc-based tokens with USDC. This places a retail-focused token-launch ecosystem alongside the institutional infrastructure Circle is building.
That combination illustrates an important feature of the current blockchain market: the boundaries between traditional finance, decentralized markets and internet-native speculation are becoming increasingly interconnected.
One side is focused on regulated derivatives and tokenized financial instruments; another is building stablecoin-native settlement infrastructure; meanwhile, retail applications are looking to capture activity on those same networks.
The implications will depend on execution, liquidity, regulation and user adoption.
Payward’s Hyperliquid strategy must operate within the requirements governing U.S. derivatives markets, while Arc must demonstrate that institutional-grade infrastructure can attract sustainable application activity beyond its launch period.
The developments show that the next generation of crypto infrastructure is increasingly being built around interoperability between regulated finance, stablecoins and onchain markets. The contest is no longer simply about creating another blockchain or exchange.
It is increasingly about controlling the rails through which capital, trading and digital assets move across the global financial system.