Self-Regulatory Organizations; Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc.; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of a Proposed Rule Change To Adopt Fees for New Logical Ports in Connection With a New Connectivity Offering on Its Equity Options Platform

<NOTICE> SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Release No. 34-104410; File No. SR-CboeBZX-2025-158]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Self-Regulatory Organizations; Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc.; Notice of Filing and Immediate Effectiveness of a Proposed Rule Change To Adopt Fees for New Logical Ports in Connection With a New Connectivity Offering on Its Equity Options Platform</SUBJECT> <DATE>December 16, 2025.</DATE> Pursuant to Section 19(b)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Act”), <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and Rule 19b-4 thereunder, <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> notice is hereby given that on December 4, 2025, Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc. (the “Exchange” or “BZX”) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”) the 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> Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc. (the “Exchange” or “BZX”) proposes to adopt fees for new logical ports in connection with a new connectivity offering on its equity options platform. The text of the proposed rule change is provided in Exhibit 5. The text of the proposed rule change is also available on the Commission's website ( <E T="03">https://www.sec.gov/rules/sro.shtml</E> ), the Exchange's website ( <E T="03">https://www.cboe.com/us/equities/regulation/rule_filings/bzx/</E> ), and at the principal office of the Exchange. <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 its fee schedule to adopt fees for Unitized Logical Ports, a new connectivity offering for its equity options platform (“BZX Options”) and adopt new Average Daily Quote and Average Daily Order fees. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  The Exchange initially submitted the proposed rule change on August 30, 2024 and was effective September 3, 2024 (SR-CboeBZX-2024-082). On September 13, 2024, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-CboeBZX-2024-088. On November 12, 2024, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-CboeBZX-2024-113. On December 20, 2024, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-CboeBZX-2024-131. On February 3, 2025, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-CboeBZX-2025-016. On April 4, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-Cboe-BZX-2025-052. On June 2, 2025, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-Cboe-BZX-2025-075. On July 31, 2025, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-CboeBZX-2025-107. On September 26, 2025, the Exchange submitted SR-CboeBZX-2025-134. On November 24, 2025, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted SR-CboeBZX-2025-152. On December 4, 2025, the Exchange withdrew that filing and submitted this filing. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD3">Unitized Port Fees</HD> By way of background, Exchange Members may interface with the Exchange's Trading System  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> (hereinafter, “System”) by utilizing either the Financial Information Exchange (“FIX”) protocol or the Binary Order Entry (“BOE”) protocol. The Exchange further offers a variety of logical ports, <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> which provide users of these ports with the ability within the Exchange's System to accomplish a specific function through a connection, such as order entry, data receipt or access to information. For example, such ports include Logical Ports, (“Bulk Ports”). By way of further background, each of these ports corresponds to a single running order handler. Each order handler processes the messages it receives from these ports from the connected Members. This processing includes determining whether the message contains the required information to enter the System, whether the message parameters satisfy port-level ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> pre-trade) risk controls, and where to send that message within the System ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> to which matching engine. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> ) Once an order handler completes the processing of a message, it sends that message to the appropriate matching engine. <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The terms “Trading System” and “System” mean the automated trading system used by BZX Options for the trading of options contracts. <E T="03">See</E> Chapter XVI. General Provisions—BZX Options, Rule 16.1 Definitions. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Exchange Rule 21.1 (l)(2), definition of “logical port.” Logical ports include FIX and BOE ports (used for order entry), drop logical port (which grants users the ability to receive and/or send drop copies) and ports that are used for receipt of certain market data feeds. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  The term “Logical Ports” used herein shall refer to FIX and BOE ports (used for order entry). <E T="03">See</E> Cboe BZX Options Fee Schedule, Options Logical Port Fees, “Logical Ports” (which exclude Purge Port, Multicast PITCH Spin Server Port or GRP Port). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  Purge Ports provide users the ability to cancel a subset (or all) of open orders across Executing Firm ID(s) (“EFID(s)”), Underlying symbol(s), or CustomGroupID(s), across multiple logical ports/sessions. <E T="03">See</E> Securities Exchange Act Release 79956 (February 3, 2017), 82 FR 10102 (February 9, 2017) (SR-BatsBZX-2017-05). <E T="03">See also https://cdn.cboe.com/resources/membership/US_Options_BOE_Specification.pdf</E> and <E T="03">https://cdn.cboe.com/resources/membership/__FIX_Specification.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Exchange Rule 21.1 (l)(3), definition of “bulk port.” Bulk Ports provide users with the ability to submit and update multiple quote bids and offers in one message through logical ports enabled for bulk-quoting. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  A matching engine is a part of the Exchange's System that processes options quotes and trades on a symbol-by-symbol basis. Some matching engines will process option classes with multiple root symbols, and other matching engines will be dedicated to one single option root symbol (for example, options on SPY will 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. </FTNT> Historically, all order handlers connect to all matching engines. That is, under the BOEv2 and FIX protocols, <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Members were able to access all symbols from a single logical port since each port corresponds to a single order handler that conveniently connects to all matching engines (“convenience layer”). Although the Exchange configures the software and hardware for its order handlers in the same manner, there can be a natural variance in the amount of time it takes individual order handlers to process messages of the same type under this architecture. Factors that contribute to this differentiation in processing times include the availability of shared resources (such as memory), which is impacted by (among other things) then-current message rates, the number of active symbols ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> classes), and recent messages for a symbol. This natural differentiation in processing times inherently may cause some messages to be sent from an order handler to a matching engine ahead of other messages that the Exchange's System may have received earlier on a different order handler. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  The Exchange notes for clarity that while BOEv2 has been decommissioned, Members can still access the convenience layer through BOEv3 protocol. </FTNT> The Exchange recently implemented a new architecture and protocol which includes, among other things, a single gateway per matching engine (“unitized layer”), which renders the above-described natural variance of order handler processing irrelevant for Members that connect to the unitized order handler. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> More specifically, effective August 19, 2024, the Exchange implemented this new unitized access architecture and a new version of its Binary Order Entry (BOE) protocol  <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> (“BOEv3”), which also resulted in the adoption of new logical port types (“Unitized Logical Ports”), for which the Exchange is now seeking to establish fees. <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> Under the new unitized BOEv3 architecture, a single BOEv3 order handler corresponds to a single matching engine and all message traffic (including FIX and BOEv3 convenience layer port traffic)  <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> passes through this unitized BOEv3 order handler before reaching that order handler's corresponding matching engine. <SU>15</SU> <FTREF/> If a Member desires to access this unitized layer of the BOEv3 architecture, the Member would need to obtain a Unitized Logical Port for each corresponding matching engine(s) that process the symbol(s) that Member desires to trade. <SU>16</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 72k characters. 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