Self-Regulatory Organizations; MIAX Emerald, LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of a Proposed Rule Change To Amend the MIAX Emerald Options Exchange Fee Schedule To Remove Text Capping the Number of Limited Service MIAX Emerald Express Interface Ports Available to Each Market Maker

<NOTICE> SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Release No. 34-103163; File No. SR-EMERALD-2025-12]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Self-Regulatory Organizations; MIAX Emerald, LLC; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of a Proposed Rule Change To Amend the MIAX Emerald Options Exchange Fee Schedule To Remove Text Capping the Number of Limited Service MIAX Emerald Express Interface Ports Available to Each Market Maker</SUBJECT> <DATE>June 2, 2025.</DATE> Pursuant to the provisions of Section 19(b)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act” or “Act”)  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and Rule 19b-4 thereunder, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> notice is hereby given that on May 23, 2025, MIAX Emerald, LLC (“MIAX Emerald” or “Exchange”) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) a proposed rule change as described in Items I, II, and III below, which Items have been prepared by the Exchange. The Commission is publishing this notice to solicit comments on the proposed rule change from interested persons. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  15 U.S.C. 78s(b)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  17 CFR 240.19b-4. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Self-Regulatory Organization's Statement of the Terms of Substance of the Proposed Rule Change</HD> The Exchange proposes to amend the MIAX Emerald Options Exchange Fee Schedule (the “Fee Schedule”) to remove text capping the number of Limited Service MIAX Emerald Express Interface (“MEI”)  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> Ports available to each Market Maker. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> Upon effectiveness of this proposal, the Exchange will include the same cap on the number of Limited Service MEI Ports  <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> in its MEI interface specification document, available on its website, which is the same location where its affiliate options exchanges include their cap for similar ports (described in more detail below). The Exchange does not propose to amend the fee for Limited Service MEI Ports. <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The MIAX Emerald Express Interface (“MEI”) is a connection to the MIAX Emerald System that enables Market Makers to submit simple and complex electronic quotes to MIAX Emerald. <E T="03">See</E> the Definitions section of the Fee Schedule. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The term “Market Maker” refers to “Lead Market Maker” (“LMM”), “Primary Lead Market Maker” (“PLMM”) and “Registered Market Maker” (“RMM”), collectively. <E T="03">See</E> the Definitions section of the Fee Schedule and Exchange Rule 100. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  The term “Limited Service MEI Ports” means a port which provides Market Makers with the ability to send simple and complex eQuotes and quote purge messages only, but not Market Maker Quotes, to the MIAX Emerald System. Limited Service MEI Ports are also capable of receiving administrative information. Market Makers initially receive four Limited Service MEI Ports per Matching Engine. <E T="03">See</E> the Definitions section of the Fee Schedule. </FTNT> The text of the proposed rule change is available on the Exchange's website at <E T="03">https://www.miaxglobal.com/markets/us-options/miax-options/rule-filings,</E> at the Exchange's principal office, and at the Commission's Public Reference Room. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Self-Regulatory Organization's Statement of the Purpose of, and Statutory Basis for, the Proposed Rule Change</HD> In its filing with the Commission, the Exchange included statements concerning the purpose of and basis for the proposed rule change and discussed any comments it received on the proposed rule change. The text of these statements may be examined at the places specified in Item IV below. The Exchange has prepared summaries, set forth in sections A, B, and C below, of the most significant aspects of such statements. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Self-Regulatory Organization's Statement of the Purpose of, and Statutory Basis for, the Proposed Rule Change</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Purpose</HD> The Exchange proposes to amend the third explanatory paragraph in Section 5)d)ii) of the Fee Schedule to remove text that caps the maximum number of additional Limited Service MEI Ports available to each Market Maker. The purpose of this change is to provide consistency in the Fee Schedule with the fee schedules of the Exchange's affiliated equity options exchanges, Miami International Securities Exchange, LLC (“MIAX”), MIAX PEARL, LLC (“MIAX Pearl”), and MIAX Sapphire, LLC (“MIAX Sapphire”), which do not include language providing for a similar cap in their respective fee schedules. Upon effectiveness of this proposal, the Exchange will include the same cap on the number of Limited Service MEI Ports in its MEI interface specification document, available on its website, which is the same location where its affiliated equity options exchanges include their cap for similar ports. The Exchange does not propose to amend the fee charged for each additional Limited Service MEI Port that Market Makers may voluntarily purchase. Currently, the Exchange allocates two Full Service MEI Ports  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> and four Limited Service MEI Ports per Matching Engine  <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> to which each Market Maker connects. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The Full Service MEI Ports and Limited Service MEI Ports (including any additional Limited Service MEI Port utilized by Market Makers above the four allocated ports) all include access to the Exchange's primary and secondary data centers and its disaster recovery center. Market Makers may request additional Limited Service MEI Ports for which they are assessed the existing $420 monthly fee for each additional Limited Service MEI Port they request. <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  The term “Full Service MEI Ports” means a port which provides Market Makers with the ability to send Market Maker simple and complex quotes, eQuotes, and quote purge messages to the MIAX Emerald System. Full Service MEI Ports are also capable of receiving administrative information. Market Makers are limited to two Full Service MEI Ports per Matching Engine. <E T="03">See</E> the Definitions section of the Fee Schedule. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  The term “Matching Engine” means a part of the MIAX Emerald electronic system that processes options orders and trades on a symbol-by-symbol basis. Some Matching Engines will process option classes with multiple root symbols, and other Matching Engines may be dedicated to one single option root symbol (for example, options on SPY may be processed by one single Matching Engine that is dedicated only to SPY). A particular root symbol may only be assigned to a single designated Matching Engine. A particular root symbol may not be assigned to multiple Matching Engines. <E T="03">See</E> the Definitions section of the Fee Schedule. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Fee Schedule, Section 5)d)ii). </FTNT> The Exchange established Limited Service MEI Ports to enhance the MEI Port connectivity available to Market Makers, and Limited Service MEI Ports have been made available to Market Makers since the Exchange launched operations in 2019. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> Limited Service MEI Ports have been well received by Market Makers. Market Makers are currently limited to purchasing ten additional Limited Service MEI Ports per Matching Engine (above the initial four Limited Service MEI Ports that the Exchange automatically allocates for each Matching Engine), for a total of fourteen Limited Service MEI Ports per Matching Engine. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Securities Exchange Act Release No. 85393 (March 21, 2019), 84 FR 11599 (March 27, 2019) (SR-EMERALD-2019-15) (establishing initial Fee Schedule with Limited Service MEI Port availability). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Fee Schedule, Section 5)d)ii). </FTNT> The Exchange now proposes to amend the third explanatory paragraph in Section 5)d)ii) of the Fee Schedule to remove language that caps the maximum number of Limited Service MEI Ports that are available to each Market Maker. In particular, the Exchange proposes to delete the following sentence from Section 5)d)ii) of the Fee Schedule: “Market Makers are limited to ten additional Limited Service MEI Ports per Matching Engine, for a total of fourteen Limited Service MEI Ports per Matching Engine.” This change will bring the Exchange's Fee Schedule in line with its affiliates' fee schedules (MIAX, MIAX Pearl, and MIAX Sapphire  <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> ), all of which do not include text providing for a similar cap on the maximum number of Limited Service MEI/MEO  <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> Ports available to each market maker on those exchanges in their respective fee schedules. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> Further, several other equity options exchange do not provide a limitation on the number of ports available to members in their fee schedules. <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> Aside from its affiliated options exchanges, the Exchange has not been able to locate text regarding limitations on port access in other exchanges' technical specifications or similar type documents that are publicly available. <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  The Exchange's affiliated options exchanges each provide the cap on the maximum number of Limited Service MEI/MEO Ports available to each market maker on those exchanges in their respective interface specification documents, all of which are available on the MIAX Exchange Group website. <E T="03">See</E> MIAX Pearl Options Exchange, MEO Interface Specification, Version 2.1a, Section 1.6, page 9 (dated April 8, 2024), <E T="03">available at https://www.miaxglobal.com/sites/default/files/job-files/MIAX_Express_Orders_MEO_v2.1a.pdf;</E> MIAX Options Exchange, MEI Interface Specification, Version 2.10a, Section 1.4, page 4 (dated April 8, 2024), <E T="03">available at https://www.miaxglobal.com/sites/default/ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 27k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━