Kalshi filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Sept. 28 to terminate its Volume Incentive Program no earlier than Oct. 13, 2026—nearly a year before the program's previously scheduled Oct. 1, 2027 end date. The exchange offered no public rationale for the accelerated wind-down.

The move ends a pool that compensates eligible traders based on their share of executed volume in designated Kalshi markets, including perpetual futures. Kalshi's filing does not identify which perpetual markets, if any, carried active volume-reward allocations, leaving it unclear how much of the contract's recent activity was tied to the program being withdrawn.

What does the Volume Incentive Program do?

Under the program, eligible traders split a fixed reward pool in proportion to executed volume during windows of up to 31 days. Event-contract trades qualify only at prices between 3 cents and 97 cents; perpetuals face no price restriction. Kalshi affiliates and members with Market Maker Agreements are excluded.

The Sept. 28 filing terminates only the volume-based pool. It does not touch Market Maker Agreements or the Temporary Perpetual Fee Rebate Program, both of which follow separate timelines.

Why does this matter for ether perpetuals?

The withdrawal lands one week after Kalshi publicly defended an unusual size pattern in its ether perpetual market. On Sept. 22, the exchange attributed repeated-size trades to a single market maker's resting orders rather than to coordinated activity.

"The fixed size trades are entirely consistent with a single maker putting up resting orders of a fixed size and getting traded against by many takers," Kalshi wrote. The exchange added that hundreds of distinct counterparties traded against the maker's orders and that it had identified no evidence of collusion or wash trades.

The Defiant's analysis of 120,000 consecutive ether perpetual trades sampled on Sept. 20–21 found that a single repeated-size cluster accounted for 47.2% of those trades and 62.75% of the sample's notional value. Those clustered orders initially sat just below $5,500 before shifting to roughly $5,425.55. Kalshi's public API did not name counterparties, so the pattern itself could not establish wash trading.

How do volume rewards differ from market-maker payments?

Volume rewards compensate completed trades. Kalshi's market-maker arrangements, by contrast, pay flat fees for placing resting orders that meet specified size, spread, and time-on-book criteria—independent of fill volume. Terminating the volume pool narrows one incentive channel while preserving the maker-fee structure the exchange cited in its Sept. 22 defense.

Where do fee rebates stand?

A Sept. 24 filing updates the Temporary Perpetual Fee Rebate Program while retaining full repayment of net maker and taker fees to self-clearing members. The update preserves limits that prevent overlapping per-trade incentives from producing net-negative fees. Revised terms take effect upon exchange notice, no earlier than 5 p.m. ET on Oct. 8.

What changes for Kalshi's liquidity incentives on Oct. 13?

As of that date, the only remaining exchange-administered incentives for perpetual activity are the maker-fee payments preserved in Market Maker Agreements and the revised fee rebate program, both of which Kalshi can operate without the volume pool's per-trade proportional payouts in place.