On February 18, 2026, Hyperliquid — the decentralized exchange commanding 70% of on-chain perpetual futures volume — launched a Washington, D.C. policy center backed by $29 million in HYPE tokens and led by one of crypto's most respected regulatory minds. It is the single largest commitment of pr...
"Financial markets are migrating onto public blockchains because they offer efficiency, transparency and resilience that legacy systems cannot match. Now the United States must choose: We can either adopt new rules that allow this innovation to flourish here at home, or we can wait and watch as other nations seize the opportunity." — Jake Chervinsky, Founding CEO, Hyperliquid Policy Center
On February 18, 2026, Hyperliquid — the decentralized exchange commanding 70% of on-chain perpetual futures volume — launched a Washington, D.C. policy center backed by $29 million in HYPE tokens and led by one of crypto's most respected regulatory minds. It is the single largest commitment of protocol treasury capital to political infrastructure in DeFi history.
This is not an isolated event. It is the culmination of a structural shift: DeFi protocols are evolving from pure technology projects into political actors. The Hyperliquid Policy Center joins the DeFi Education Fund, the Solana Policy Institute, and a constellation of advocacy organizations now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to shape the regulatory architecture that will govern decentralized finance. What was once the exclusive domain of centralized exchanges like Coinbase is now a multi-front war fought by the protocols themselves.
The stakes are enormous. The CLARITY Act — the market structure bill that will define which agency regulates what — is stalled partly over DeFi provisions. Perpetual futures, a $2.95 trillion annual market that Hyperliquid dominates, remain functionally illegal for U.S. retail traders. And with the 2026 midterms approaching, the crypto industry's $193 million Fairshake war chest is primed to punish legislators who get in the way. The question is no longer whether DeFi gets regulated. It is who writes the rules.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center (HPC) launched with three features that distinguish it from every prior DeFi advocacy effort.
Scale. The Hyper Foundation committed 1 million HYPE tokens — approximately $29 million at current prices — to fund the center. For context, the Digital Chamber spent $5.6 million on lobbying in 2024. The Blockchain Association spent $8.3 million. Hyperliquid's single commitment dwarfs both combined. This is not a token gesture. It is a protocol deploying balance-sheet capital at institutional scale to buy a seat at the policymaking table.
Talent. Jake Chervinsky, the center's founding CEO, previously served as policy head at both the Blockchain Association and Variant Fund. He is joined by Brad Bourque, formerly of Sullivan & Cromwell, and Salah Ghazzal, previously Variant's policy lead. This is a team that knows how Washington works — not crypto natives playing tourist in D.C., but regulatory professionals who have drafted comment letters, briefed congressional committees, and shaped the trajectory of prior legislation.
Specificity. Unlike broader advocacy groups, the HPC has a surgical focus: building a legal framework for perpetual futures in the United States. This is not abstract policy work. Hyperliquid processed over $250 billion in perpetual futures volume in January 2026 alone. The protocol's entire economic model — which generated $908 million in annual revenue in 2025 — depends on a product that U.S. regulators have never formally sanctioned for retail markets.
The HPC does not operate in a vacuum. It enters a crowded and rapidly professionalizing field of crypto policy organizations, each backed by protocol or corporate treasuries and competing for influence over the same legislative pipeline.
The Current Landscape:
| Organization | Primary Backer(s) | Focus | Est. Annual Budget | |---|---|---|---| | Hyperliquid Policy Center | Hyper Foundation | Perps, DeFi derivatives | ~$29M (endowment) | | DeFi Education Fund | Uniswap Governance | Broad DeFi policy | Undisclosed | | Solana Policy Institute | Solana Foundation | L1 ecosystem advocacy | Undisclosed | | Blockchain Association | Industry coalition | Broad crypto policy | ~$8.3M (2024) | | Digital Chamber | Industry coalition | Broad digital assets | ~$5.6M (2024) | | Coin Center | Donations | Crypto civil liberties | ~$4M (est.) | | Fairshake PAC | Coinbase, Ripple, a16z | Electoral politics | $193M war chest |
The pattern is unmistakable: protocol-native organizations are displacing industry trade groups as the primary engines of crypto policy. The DeFi Education Fund was seeded by Uniswap governance. The Solana Policy Institute was established by the Solana Foundation and is led by Miller Whitehouse-Levine, who previously ran the DeFi Education Fund. Now Hyperliquid has created the most generously funded single-protocol policy shop in crypto history.
This represents a fundamental shift in how political influence is purchased in the digital asset industry. In 2022, policy work was dominated by centralized exchanges and venture funds. By 2026, the protocols themselves are writing the checks.
The HPC's focus on perpetual derivatives is not arbitrary. It targets what may be the single most consequential regulatory gap in U.S. crypto markets.
The market reality: Perpetual futures are the dominant trading instrument in crypto. Globally, perps generate more volume than spot markets. Hyperliquid alone processed $2.95 trillion in cumulative 2025 trading volume. Yet in the United States, these instruments exist in regulatory limbo — not clearly classified as futures (which would fall under CFTC jurisdiction) nor as securities (SEC jurisdiction).
The regulatory opening: CFTC Chairman Mike Selig's "Future-Proof" initiative, launched in early 2026, explicitly calls for onshoring perpetual derivatives. In a joint statement with the SEC, both agencies acknowledged the potential of "innovation exemptions" to allow perps to trade on regulated platforms. Coinbase self-certified perpetual futures contracts in June 2025 without CFTC objection — a quiet but significant precedent.
The economic prize: If perpetual futures are onshored under a workable regulatory framework, the addressable market for U.S.-regulated perps could reach into the trillions. Our existing analysis of the $62 trillion perpetual futures opportunity documented three competing models for bringing these instruments onshore. The HPC's formation signals that DeFi protocols intend to ensure they are not regulated out of this market.
The risk for DeFi: The danger is that onshoring occurs exclusively through centralized, licensed intermediaries — CME, Coinbase Derivatives, Robinhood — while decentralized protocols are classified as unlicensed exchanges. The HPC exists to prevent this outcome. Its entire mandate is to ensure that the regulatory framework accommodates decentralized market structures, not just traditional ones with blockchain window dressing.
The deeper story is economic. DeFi protocols have accumulated substantial treasuries, and they are now deploying that capital into political infrastructure the same way corporations deploy lobbying budgets.
Hyperliquid's economics justify the spend. The protocol earned $908 million in revenue in 2025, with $848 million from perpetual futures trading fees. Even after an 80% fee reduction in 2026, Cantor Fitzgerald models project the protocol could generate over $5 billion in annual fees at maturity. Against that revenue trajectory, a $29 million policy investment represents roughly 3% of one year's revenue — a rounding error if it secures market access to the world's largest economy.
The Fairshake model proved the concept. The crypto industry's political action committee spent $195.8 million in the 2024 election cycle and claims credit for flipping multiple congressional seats. With $193 million on hand for the 2026 midterms — funded by $25 million each from Coinbase and Ripple, $24 million from a16z, and contributions from Gemini and others — the PAC has established that political spending delivers legislative results.
The question for other protocols: If Hyperliquid's policy investment accelerates favorable regulation, every major DeFi protocol will face pressure to establish its own policy infrastructure. Aave, whose governance recently proposed the "Aave Will Win Framework" to direct protocol revenue to its DAO, could easily redirect a fraction of those funds to advocacy. MakerDAO, Lido, and other protocols with substantial treasuries will be watching closely.
The logical endpoint is a Washington, D.C. ecosystem where every major protocol maintains a policy office the way every Fortune 500 company maintains a government affairs team. We are in the early innings of that transformation.
All of this political spending converges on a single legislative choke point: the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
The bill, which passed the House in June 2025, would grant the CFTC exclusive jurisdiction over digital commodity spot markets while maintaining SEC authority over investment contract assets. The Senate Banking Committee released its version in January 2026, but the bill remains stalled over DeFi provisions.
The core dispute: How do you regulate code? If a protocol is "sufficiently decentralized" — a term the bill attempts to define but that remains contested — it may qualify for lighter-touch regulation or exemption from registration requirements. But the definition of decentralization is intensely political. Too strict, and it functionally bans DeFi in the U.S. Too permissive, and centralized projects wrap themselves in decentralization theater to evade oversight.
Citi analysts noted in January 2026 that "the DeFi fight could stall the entire bill." The crypto industry's own lobbying coalition is fractured: Coinbase reportedly split with a16z over how the bill should treat DeFi platforms, with Coinbase preferring clearer distinctions between centralized and decentralized systems.
The HPC's formation should be read in this context. Hyperliquid is not just advocating for DeFi in the abstract — it is positioning itself to influence the specific legislative language that will determine whether decentralized perpetual futures platforms can legally serve U.S. customers. Every word in the CLARITY Act's definitions section is worth billions of dollars in market access.
Hyperliquid's $29 million policy center is the largest single-protocol political investment in DeFi history, eclipsing the combined annual budgets of the Digital Chamber and Blockchain Association.
DeFi protocols are transitioning from technology projects to political actors, deploying treasury capital to shape regulation the way traditional corporations fund lobbying operations.
Perpetual futures onshoring is the specific regulatory prize. A workable U.S. framework could unlock trillions in addressable market; an exclusionary framework could lock DeFi out entirely.
The CLARITY Act is the legislative bottleneck, with DeFi provisions threatening to stall the entire market structure bill. The definition of "sufficient decentralization" is the most consequential phrase in crypto regulation.
The crypto policy landscape has professionalized dramatically. With $193 million in PAC funding, $29 million in protocol-backed policy centers, and at least 73 companies filing lobbying disclosures, the industry's political infrastructure now rivals traditional financial services.
Every major DeFi protocol will face pressure to follow Hyperliquid's lead. If political spending demonstrably improves regulatory outcomes, protocol governance will increasingly allocate treasury funds to Washington, D.C.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center's launch marks a phase transition for DeFi. For years, the decentralized finance movement operated on the implicit assumption that good technology would speak for itself — that regulators would eventually recognize the efficiency gains of transparent, permissionless markets and create space for them to operate.
That assumption is dead. In 2026, regulatory outcomes are determined by who has the best lawyers, the deepest lobbying budgets, and the most sophisticated understanding of how legislation gets made. Hyperliquid has looked at its $908 million revenue stream, its 70% market share in on-chain perps, and the existential regulatory risk to its business model, and concluded that $29 million in political infrastructure is the highest-ROI investment it can make.
The broader implication is structural. DeFi is no longer a technology sector lobbying for permission. It is becoming a political constituency with its own institutions, its own professionals, and its own war chests. The question that will define the next chapter of decentralized finance is not whether the code works — it does. The question is whether the protocols can outspend, outmaneuver, and outlawyer the incumbents who would prefer to keep them offshore.
The battle for DeFi's future is no longer fought on-chain. It is fought on Capitol Hill.