On February 18, 2026, Hyperliquid — the decentralized perpetual futures exchange that processed over $250 billion in trading volume last month — launched the Hyperliquid Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit funded with $29 million in HYPE tokens. The center is led by Jake Chervinsky,...
"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, CEO, Hyperliquid Policy Center
On February 18, 2026, Hyperliquid — the decentralized perpetual futures exchange that processed over $250 billion in trading volume last month — launched the Hyperliquid Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit funded with $29 million in HYPE tokens. The center is led by Jake Chervinsky, one of crypto's most prominent regulatory lawyers, formerly of the Blockchain Association and venture firm Variant.
This is not another trade association. It is a protocol-funded policy operation with a singular mission: to create a legal framework for perpetual derivatives — the most traded instrument in all of crypto — and to ensure DeFi exchanges can operate lawfully inside the United States. The move signals a new phase in crypto's Washington strategy: individual protocols are no longer content to let industry groups speak for them. They are building their own lobbying infrastructure, with their own treasuries, to fight for their own regulatory categories.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center arrives into an already formidable crypto-political landscape. Fairshake, the industry's bipartisan super PAC, holds $193 million for the 2026 midterms. Coinbase alone has contributed $100 million across election cycles. But those are broad-based political operations. What Hyperliquid is doing is different — and arguably more consequential. It is the first major DeFi protocol to fund a dedicated policy shop aimed at carving out regulatory space for a specific financial instrument class.
The Hyper Foundation — the nonprofit entity supporting the Hyperliquid ecosystem — committed 1 million HYPE tokens, valued at approximately $29 million at current prices, to seed the Hyperliquid Policy Center. At HYPE's current trading price of roughly $29.91, with a fully diluted market capitalization of $7.1 billion, this represents a meaningful but not existential allocation from the foundation's treasury.
The founding team reads like a Washington power roster assembled specifically for this fight:
The center is actively hiring a Chief of Staff, Head of Communications, and Head of Government Relations — signaling it intends to operate as a full-service policy operation, not a part-time think tank.
The $29 million war chest dwarfs the budgets of existing crypto policy organizations. The Digital Chamber spent approximately $5.6 million on lobbying in 2024. The Blockchain Association spent $8.3 million. Even the well-funded DeFi Education Fund, which has won key legal battles including amicus briefs in SEC v. Coinbase, operates on a fraction of what Hyperliquid just committed to a single-protocol policy shop.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center's top priority is not generic "crypto regulation." It has a specific target: creating a legal framework for perpetual derivatives.
Perpetual futures — contracts that track an asset's price without an expiration date — are the most traded instrument in crypto by a wide margin. On-chain perpetual futures markets alone are processing nearly $10 billion in daily volume as of early 2026. Centralized exchanges like Binance process multiples of that. Yet perpetuals exist in a regulatory no-man's land in the United States.
The core problem: perpetual futures do not fit cleanly into existing categories. They are not traditional futures (which expire and are regulated by the CFTC). They are not securities (regulated by the SEC). They are not swaps in the conventional sense. The CLARITY Act, which passed the House in 2025, gives the CFTC expanded jurisdiction over "digital commodities" and instructs both agencies to coordinate on derivatives — but it does not explicitly address perpetuals.
This is not an academic gap. It is the reason that Hyperliquid, despite being a U.S.-founded protocol with U.S.-based leadership, processes the vast majority of its volume from non-U.S. users. It is the reason that the largest crypto derivatives market in the world — estimated at over $1 trillion monthly across centralized and decentralized platforms — operates almost entirely offshore.
Chervinsky's bet is that a targeted, well-funded advocacy effort can create a regulatory pathway that brings this activity onshore — and that Hyperliquid, as the dominant on-chain perpetuals platform, would be the primary beneficiary.
Hyperliquid's decision to invest $29 million in Washington lobbying is not altruistic. The protocol has substantial economic interests at stake.
| Metric | Value | |--------|-------| | Perpetual futures volume (January 2026) | ~$250 billion | | Spot trading volume (January 2026) | $6.6 billion | | Peak daily revenue (January 31, 2026) | $4.3 million | | Annualized protocol revenue | >$1.3 billion | | Total value locked (TVL) | $4.58 billion | | Open interest | $9.57 billion | | DEX perpetual futures market share | ~38% | | HYPE market capitalization | ~$7.1 billion |
Hyperliquid's market share has declined from a peak of roughly 80% in mid-2025 to approximately 38% today, as competitors like Aster ($31.7 billion weekly volume) and Lighter ($25.3 billion) have gained ground. But Hyperliquid still leads in open interest — $9.57 billion versus $7.34 billion combined for all other major decentralized perpetual platforms — and generates the highest protocol revenue in the DEX perpetuals category.
The protocol's revenue model is notable: Hyperliquid collects over $1.3 billion annually in protocol revenue and channels approximately 97% into HYPE token buybacks. This creates a direct link between regulatory outcomes and token value. If U.S. regulation enables onshore perpetual futures trading, Hyperliquid's addressable market expands dramatically. If regulation prohibits it, the protocol's growth ceiling is constrained to non-U.S. markets.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center does not operate in a vacuum. It enters a lobbying ecosystem that has matured dramatically over the past two years.
Tier 1: Super PACs (Electoral Power)
Tier 2: Trade Associations (Industry-Wide Advocacy)
Tier 3: Protocol-Specific Policy Operations (New Category)
The emergence of Tier 3 — individual protocols funding their own policy operations — represents a structural shift. When Coinbase donates to Fairshake, it is investing in a broadly pro-crypto political environment. When Hyperliquid funds a policy center dedicated to perpetual derivatives regulation, it is investing in a specific regulatory outcome that directly benefits its business model.
This is K Street logic applied to DeFi: you don't wait for the industry to advocate for you. You build your own operation, hire the best lawyers, and write the policy papers yourself.
The current legislative environment creates both urgency and opportunity for Hyperliquid's policy push.
The CLARITY Act — the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025 — passed the House in July 2025 and is now advancing through the Senate. The bill establishes the CFTC as the primary regulator for digital commodities and creates registration pathways for digital commodity exchanges and brokers. It protects software developers and peer-to-peer activity while subjecting centralized intermediaries to compliance requirements.
But the CLARITY Act has a significant gap: it does not comprehensively address on-chain derivatives. The CFTC has signaled interest in creating "pathways to onshore true perpetual derivatives products," and a Joint CFTC-SEC event in February 2026 — Project Crypto — included workstreams on "various on-chain derivatives and options products." But these are early-stage discussions, not settled policy.
Meanwhile, the Digital Commodity Intermediaries Act cleared the Senate Agriculture Committee in February 2026, adding another regulatory vector that could affect DeFi derivatives platforms.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center is positioned to intervene at exactly this legislative inflection point — when the rules for on-chain derivatives are being drafted but not yet finalized. This is when lobbying has its highest return on investment.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center raises fundamental questions about DeFi governance and the relationship between protocols and political power.
The Treasury Question: Hyperliquid funded its policy center through the Hyper Foundation, using protocol treasury tokens. This is token-holder capital being deployed for political advocacy. While the foundation operates independently, the alignment between the policy center's mission (legalizing perpetual derivatives in the U.S.) and the protocol's business interests (being the dominant perpetual derivatives platform) is explicit. Should protocol treasuries be used for lobbying? Who approves these allocations?
The Centralization Paradox: DeFi's philosophical claim is decentralization — the removal of intermediaries and gatekeepers. Yet the most effective way to influence policy in Washington is through centralized, well-funded organizations staffed by former BigLaw attorneys. The Hyperliquid Policy Center, with its Sullivan & Cromwell alumnus and Blockchain Association veteran, is playing the traditional influence game with non-traditional money.
The Precedent Effect: If Hyperliquid's investment yields favorable regulatory outcomes, expect every major DeFi protocol to follow. Aave, Uniswap, MakerDAO, and others all have substantial treasuries and specific regulatory interests. A world where each major protocol runs its own D.C. policy shop would represent a fundamental shift in how decentralized organizations interact with sovereign states.
The Hyperliquid Policy Center is not just another crypto lobbying group. It is the first shot in what will likely become a new era of protocol-specific political advocacy — where individual DeFi platforms, flush with token treasury capital, build their own Washington operations to fight for their own regulatory categories.
The economic logic is straightforward. Hyperliquid processes over $250 billion monthly in perpetual futures volume, nearly all of it offshore because U.S. regulation has not caught up. A favorable regulatory framework could unlock the largest financial market in the world for on-chain perpetual trading. A $29 million investment to influence that outcome is, by any corporate standard, a bargain.
But the implications extend beyond one protocol. If Hyperliquid succeeds, it creates a template: identify a specific regulatory gap, fund a dedicated policy operation, hire top-tier legal talent, and write the rules yourself. This is how industries from pharmaceuticals to defense have operated for decades. DeFi is simply arriving at the table with a different kind of treasury.
The question is no longer whether DeFi will engage with Washington. It is whether Washington can absorb the scale and sophistication of the lobbying infrastructure that DeFi protocols are now building — and whether the resulting regulations will serve the public interest or the protocols that wrote them.