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Imagine you're a large, established TradFi futures exchange. You make money by collecting trading fees on your large portfolio of futures products in a variety of asset classes. Where do you get ideas for new products? Your institutional customers.

An idea for a new futures product normally comes during conversations between an institution & an exchange salesperson/account manager. It normally sounds like this: "Man, we really think we could trade XYZ futures product in large size if it was available. Can you build it?"

This idea goes from the salesperson through a series of approvals by their boss, their boss's boss and/or a resource committee. Each ring on the approval chain creates a space where the initial idea can be blocked or altered from the original ask, like a game of Telephone.

Product design is another huge area where good ideas can quickly turn into duds. If the design doesn't match the customer's vision, they won't trade it. "We wanted to trade lumber futures, but not THAT lumber future."

After design is finished, the product gets sent to the technology team for development. This means adding it to a long list of things developers need to code, scheduled into multi-week sprints. If your product doesn't make it into a sprint it may be weeks before it gets built.

At the same time, a draft of the product gets sent to various regulators for approval. If the product sets any new precedent or links to an easily manipulated market, it can get rejected or delayed. (Think crypto futures approval). Regulators can take weeks+ to bless a launch.

After all the green lights are given & developers have built the product into the larger exchange platform, you can finally open it for trading. If you're lucky, the product will actually match what the customer wanted & they'll still have an interest in trading it.