Trump Says the CFTC Is Working to Onshore Hyperliquid

gm, Defiers!

These are the biggest stories in DeFi and crypto:

• Trump says the CFTC is working to onshore Hyperliquid
• Optimism hands its $49.7 million airdrop reserve to the Foundation
• Arbitrum ships optional compliance filters with the Elara upgrade
• Vlad Tenev presses Washington to let tokenized stocks trade in America
• Aligned details the ALIGN airdrop 20 months on, with no launch date
• Why DeFi Needs Onchain Insurance: The $100 Billion Coverage Gap [PARTNER]

Hyperliquid has never taken a US retail order. On Wednesday the president said the CFTC is working to change that.

Trump told a White House audience that included ICE Chief Executive Jeffrey Sprecher, Nasdaq's Adena Friedman and Robinhood's Vlad Tenev that CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion." HYPE traded near $69.56 late Wednesday, up about 19% over 24 hours. Hyperliquid Strategies, the Nasdaq-listed treasury company, closed up 30.4% at $9.39, its largest single-day gain on record. CME Group and Cboe Global Markets closed down 1.7% and 3.5%.

Sprecher's company and CME spent the spring pressing regulators to bring the venue under federal supervision, and CME's suit against the CFTC over the Kalshi perpetuals approval is still pending. Hyperliquid cleared $177.9 billion in perpetuals volume over the past 30 days without a single US retail account. Nothing Trump said commits the agency to a timetable, and no registration application has surfaced.

Read more below!

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REGULATION

Trump Says CFTC Working to Onshore Hyperliquid

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States "in a fully compliant and legal fashion," speaking at a White House event alongside SEC Chair Paul Atkins, ICE's Jeffrey Sprecher, Coinbase's Brian Armstrong and Robinhood's Vlad Tenev. Hyperliquid geoblocks users in the US and Ontario while clearing $6.19 billion in perpetuals volume over 24 hours and $177.9 billion over 30 days, with $11.72 billion in open interest, per DefiLlama. HYPE rose about 19% to $69.56 and Hyperliquid Strategies closed up 30.4%. Options volume in the treasury company ran near eight times its 30-day average, with more than 120,000 calls against fewer than 8,000 puts, and one $65,000 call purchase landed before Trump spoke. Trump used the same event to press the Senate on the Clarity Act.

Trump Says CFTC Working to Onshore HyperliquidTrump said CFTC Chair Michael Selig is working to bring the geoblocked perpetual futures venue into the US, sending HYPE up 19% and Hyperliquid Strategies to its largest one-day gain on record.thedefiant.io

Why this matters: Onshoring a non-custodial protocol puts it inside the rulebook that governs CME and ICE, the two exchanges that spent the spring asking regulators to shut it out.

BLOCKCHAINS

Optimism Redirects $49.7 Million Airdrop Reserve After Late Deciding Vote

Optimism governance approved moving 546.9 million OP, worth roughly $49.7 million at the time of the vote, out of the reserve set aside for future user airdrops and into a Strategic Ecosystem Fund the Optimism Foundation controls. The onchain vote closed at 17.974 million OP in favor against 10.931 million opposed, and it turned on one ballot: Test in Prod, an Optimism core development team, cast 8.486 million OP with 16 minutes and 52 seconds left, lifting support to 61.84% from 45.77%. Test in Prod told a 2025 Security Council nomination that it is "fully funded by the Collective." The Foundation has distributed 269.1 million OP across five airdrops and said broad user acquisition no longer fits its institutional strategy. L2BEAT's governance team called the new fund's mandate "very open-ended" and asked how deployments would be evaluated.

Why this matters: A team the Collective funds cast the deciding vote to move the Collective's airdrop reserve under Foundation control. Without that ballot the proposal fails at 46.47%.

BLOCKCHAINS

Arbitrum Activates Elara With Optional Compliance Filters for Dedicated Chains

Arbitrum activated ArbOS 61 Elara on Thursday, adding protocol-level transaction screening, priority-fee support and an alternative data-availability interface for dedicated chains. Both the compliance filter and tip collection ship disabled on Arbitrum One and Nova, and a chain owner has to configure each component, picking an external provider such as TRM Labs or Chainalysis to supply the restricted-address list. Enforcement runs at two levels: the sequencer simulates transactions and rejects the ones that break the rules, and a sentinel registers transaction hashes with an onchain guardian so force-included transactions fail inside the state transition function. Restricted addresses are stored as salted hashes. Elara also hands Offchain Labs a BaseFeeManager contract to move Arbitrum One's minimum L2 base fee inside a DAO-approved 0.01-to-0.10 gwei band for two years, and raises the Stylus code-size limit to 96 KB from 24 KB.

Why this matters: Arbitrum shipped screening that also catches the force-inclusion path, the escape hatch rollups point to when asked whether a sequencer can stop a user's transaction.

TRADFI AND FINTECH

Tenev Pushes for Tokenized Stocks in America

Robinhood Chief Executive Vlad Tenev called on US policymakers to modernize securities rules so tokenized stocks can trade in America, naming the absence of US Stock Tokens as "one glaring gap" in the company's tokenization push. The post came five days after the SEC pulled a scheduled discussion of its innovation exemption for the second time, after the White House warned the relief could complicate Clarity Act negotiations and SIFMA argued a change that size belongs in formal rulemaking. Robinhood's Stock Tokens hold $32.2 million across 191 assets, 1.34% of the $2.4 billion tokenized equity market, per RWA.xyz, against Ondo at $882.9 million. Tenev's case rests on real-time settlement, round-the-clock trading and portability, and he returned to January 2021, when two-day settlement and clearinghouse collateral calls forced Robinhood to restrict GameStop buying.

Why this matters: Robinhood runs 1.34% of the tokenized equity market and the loudest lobbying campaign for it. The SEC has now shelved the exemption that would clear the path twice.

TOKENS

Aligned Details ALIGN Airdrop 20 Months Later

Aligned published the terms of its ALIGN airdrop on Tuesday, 20 months after registration closed, without dating the token generation event every figure in the post depends on. The Genesis Drop covers 8.74% of a fixed 10 billion supply, and 44.36% of that unlocks at TGE. Wallets holding 10,000 tokens or fewer claim in full on Base; larger allocations take 10,000 at launch on Ethereum mainnet and vest the rest over 12 months. Protocol Guild gets 1.5% of supply, with L2BEAT, ZachXBT and the Zero Knowledge Podcast at 0.2% each. The ALIGN contract records 26 holders and no transfers, and sale.alignedlayer.com, built for the April auction, now reads "THE SALE HAS BEEN CANCELED." Aligned deprecated the Proof Verification Layer the drop was built around on July 21.

Why this matters: Aligned told 986,843 wallets they were eligible in December 2024. It has since cancelled the sale, retired the product the drop was built on and still has no launch date.

Other Stories Worth Your Time

Why DeFi Needs Onchain Insurance: The $100 Billion Coverage Gap (Partner) — DeFi carries close to $100 billion in total value locked and under 2% of it is covered by anything resembling insurance. Firelight's Connor Sullivan argues the gap is coverage nobody outside the deal can verify: no published limit, no policy wording, no premium.

Omnichain Launchpad Printr Shuts Down, Cancels Token Launch And Airdrop — the launchpad will cease all operations by Aug. 31 without holding the token generation event and airdrop it had promised users. It collected 84% of its $574,468 in lifetime fees during April 2026, and $173 so far in August.

Maya Protocol Exploit Drains $1.7 Million From Shared Liquidity — an attacker inflated accounting with a false subsidy, then added and removed liquidity to pull about 48.87 million CACAO and 98.82 LINK out of shared pools, per CertiK. Routing service LeoDex said Maya activated a global halt.

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