Exchange Inc. joined forces with one of the market operators behind offshore crypto-trading platform Hyperliquid as it seeks to bring perpetual futures products into US regulated markets.

ICE and Trade.xyz are planning a new market for trading perpetual futures contracts, with its own clearing, know-your-customer and anti-money laundering systems. The market will be built on Hyperliquid’s rails and use Trade.xyz products tied to the price of equities, equity indexes, commodities, and currencies, pending regulatory approval.

ICE, parent of the New York Stock Exchange, is taking a stake in Trade.xyz as part of the agreement, according to the firm’s executives. They declined to disclose the terms.

Hyperliquid, once a niche online exchange favored by crypto-native traders, has grown into one of the largest markets for perpetual futures, also known as perps, which are a type of leveraged contract that allows traders to speculate on the price of assets without an expiration date. Trade.xyz helped push Hyperliquid’s model into traditional assets, creating perpetual futures on oil, stock indexes and other commodities.

Trade.xyz and Hyperliquid have been lobbying regulators to open the door to pre-IPO perps in the US, where they say the instruments that never expire could help modernize the traditional process for initial public offerings by improving price discovery. Hyperliquid operates outside the US and isn’t officially open to American traders. Trade.xyz is subject to the same restrictions.

Traditionally, futures contracts allow investors to buy or sell an asset with a fixed price and expiration date, and they are used to speculate as well as to hedge other positions. A perpetual future has no expiration date, trades around the clock, and is often used for leveraged bets on assets. The contracts have become particularly popular among retail investors, particularly for betting on cryptocurrency and commodity prices.

Trading volumes in perpetual futures focused on more traditional assets have surged this year, drawing more interest from market-makers and hedge funds. But until recently, traders have had to access the perp market largely through platforms like Hyperliquid operating offshore.

Earlier this year, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, led by Chairman Michael Selig, laid out the conditions under which regulated US platforms may offer access to perps.

“The CFTC believes on-chain finance is an important part of the next frontier of finance and wants it to thrive in the US in a legal and compliant manner,” a CFTC spokesperson said last month.

Some companies, including prediction-markets platform Kalshi Inc. and digital-assets exchange Coinbase Global Inc., have already listed perps on US-regulated venues. Kalshi also got approval to offer perps tied to gold and silver last month. Hyperliquid Labs, the startup that develops the namesake exchange, has so far kept its perpetual futures off-limits to US users.

In September, Payward, the parent of crypto exchange Kraken, said it plans to offer US clients perpetual futures using Hyperliquid’s blockchain, subject to regulatory approval.

By teaming up with an exchange operator such as ICE, which is regulated by the CFTC and the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Trade.xyz is carving a lane to potentially offer perp products in the US. For ICE, the partnership could capture trading activity happening outside their regulated infrastructure and draw more interest from retail investors.