Cboe Global Markets, the exchange operator behind the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX), is weighing the launch of perpetual futures on its own volatility benchmark. According to the report, no contract specifications have been filed for such a product, and no listing date or detailed contract terms have been made public.

The VIX measures the 30-day volatility that S&P 500 options traders price in for the month ahead. Widely known as Wall Street's "fear gauge," the index tends to spike when demand for downside protection rises and to retreat as hedging pressure subsides. Cboe introduced the VIX in 1993 and began listing VIX futures in 2004; those contracts carry fixed monthly expirations and are cash-settled at expiration. Because of that monthly cycle, participants seeking continuous volatility exposure must roll positions from an expiring contract into the next one, a constraint a no-expiry format would by design remove.

Perpetual futures differ from this conventional structure in that they have no expiration date. The product type was popularized in cryptocurrency markets, where a funding-rate mechanism is typically used to keep the contract price aligned with the underlying index and allow positions to remain open indefinitely. A perpetual-style VIX contract would therefore depart from the monthly-expiry format that has defined listed volatility futures since their launch.

Details such as contract size, settlement mechanics, and the timing of any potential launch have not been disclosed, and the initiative remains at an exploratory stage. In the United States, exchange-listed futures products are generally certified with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) before trading begins, so a contract-specification filing with the agency would be the first publicly visible step in any such product's development.

This content was first published on COINOTAG on October 2, 2026: https://en.coinotag.com/cboe-explores-perpetual-vix-futures