Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan said U.S. regulators should oversee the financial firms building on his blockchain rather than the network itself, according to a Bloomberg interview published Thursday.

Yan's proposal places regulatory responsibility on the companies that operate trading markets on Hyperliquid. He compared the arrangement to financial firms using internet infrastructure, where rules bind the service operator, not the underlying network.

"The regulation sits at the layer where there are controls, and indeed the deployers are the ones that exercise these controls," Yan told Bloomberg.

What does the proposal change for U.S. market access?

Hyperliquid's perpetual futures platform, its flagship product, remains closed to U.S. customers. Under Yan's framework, that could change without Hyperliquid itself registering as an exchange.

The model would allow Wall Street firms to build trading businesses on Hyperliquid while each operator absorbs its own compliance obligations. For the blockchain, the arrangement separates infrastructure from regulated market operation.

A precedent is already forming. Payward, the parent company of Kraken, plans to offer U.S. investors derivatives using Hyperliquid's technology through a regulated exchange. That structure would add a CFTC-regulated operator to the Hyperliquid ecosystem even as the native perps market stays off-limits to American users.

How does this fit Washington's current posture?

Yan's comments follow President Donald Trump's August statement that the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid under U.S. federal regulations. The founder's framing suggests a path where that integration happens at the firm level rather than through the chain's registration as a market venue.

Yan rejected the reading that Hyperliquid aims to replace incumbent trading infrastructure.

"We're not trying to displace anything," Yan said. "In fact, I think the technology can benefit everyone who currently operates markets in a more traditional setting."

Why the layer distinction matters operationally

The distinction between infrastructure and operator carries practical weight. If regulators accept it, firms could deploy matching engines, margining and settlement on Hyperliquid while holding their own licenses — a division of labor familiar from traditional finance, where venues, brokers and clearinghouses each answer to separate rules.

For Hyperliquid, the approach preserves its current posture: the base network stays outside the U.S. perimeter, while regulated intermediaries create compliant access for American investors from the outside.

The Payward arrangement will serve as the first live test of that thesis. Whether the CFTC accepts firm-level oversight of Hyperliquid-based derivatives — and how it treats the underlying network in any eventual framework — will shape how other trading firms approach building on the chain.