Team Expansion, The Hyperliquid Story Continues

Original Title: How a Harvard grad helped make Hyperliquid the biggest new player in crypto—with just 11 people and no venture funding
Original Authors: Ben Weiss & Leo Schwartz, Fortune
Original Translation: SpecialistXBT, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: In the post-FTX collapse crypto world, the market's desire for transparency and security has given rise to a new generation of decentralized platforms. Among them, Hyperliquid, with its lean team of only 11 people and unique "zero venture funding" concept, has emerged as a strong contender in the competitive derivatives arena, creating a jaw-dropping revenue miracle. This in-depth feature by Fortune analyzes how Harvard whiz founder Jeff Yan, with a focus on ultimate technology pursuit, challenges traditional financial giants, aiming to build the "AWS of the financial world." It also delves into the regulatory shadows and future challenges faced by this emerging giant on its path of rapid expansion.

The following is the original content:

Around 5 a.m., a series of urgent alarms woke Jeff Yan up. This was a specially set alarm that would only sound when there was an issue at Hyperliquid, the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange he co-founded. And on this early October morning, the situation was indeed unusual.

According to data from the cryptocurrency analytics site CoinGlass, that day, following U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to impose new tariffs on China, cryptocurrency traders watched over $19 billion in leveraged positions (meaning investors betting big with borrowed funds) evaporate. "I could only stare at the screen, praying for everything to be fine," Jeff said of his exchange's system. Within an hour, he mobilized "every neuron" to analyze data and ultimately confirmed that the platform was operating as usual—it had successfully weathered a stress test where thousands of traders incurred losses while the short sellers reaped gains.

In the following weeks, the cryptocurrency industry referred to the October 10th crash as the "flash crash." It was the largest-scale liquidation event CoinGlass had ever monitored, with its aftershocks still reverberating within the industry today, two months later. This was also one of the clearest signs to date that Hyperliquid had grown into a cryptocurrency powerhouse.

The CoinGlass data shows that the platform settled over $10 billion worth of positions in a single day, a figure significantly higher than the established cryptocurrency exchanges Bybit ($4.6 billion) and Binance ($2.4 billion) in terms of liquidation volume. (Note: The $10 billion refers to the total leveraged positions liquidated; the actual amount of funds lost by traders would be lower than this.)

Major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase have thousands of employees. In contrast, Hyperliquid Labs, the company behind the namesake exchange supporting blockchain, has only 11 employees. However, according to data from the crypto analytics site DefiLlama, in just over two years, Hyperliquid has held its own against industry giants, with a derivative trading volume of around $140 billion in the past month. This translates to over $616 million in annualized revenue, and its blockchain-associated cryptocurrency (called HYPE) has also climbed the ranks in the industry, with a market capitalization close to $5.9 billion.

But Jeff hopes that Hyperliquid can go even bigger. "No one else is really trying to build what we're building right now," he says. "This is something that can really upgrade the financial system."

Wunderkinds of the Crypto World

The world of cryptocurrency has long been populated by flamboyant and outspoken figures. Jeff is not one of them. He sports black-framed glasses, neat black hair, typically wears smart shorts, and admits to feeling uncomfortable in the limelight. "This celebrity treatment is all very strange to me," he says of being mobbed at a recent cryptocurrency conference in Korea. While willing to talk about his background, he repeatedly emphasizes that Hyperliquid is an ecosystem, not a one-man show.

Despite his self-professed humility, Jeff is clearly pivotal to the rise of this crypto protocol. Born in the Bay Area, he is a quintessential child prodigy. In high school, he won gold and silver medals at the International Physics Olympiad before going on to study mathematics and computer science at Harvard University.

"He was always very calm, thoughtful," says Vladimir Novakovski, also a Harvard alum, who interviewed Jeff for an internship at the wealth management software company Addepar. (Novakovski later founded an exchange, Lighter, that competes with Hyperliquid. A spokesperson for Hyperliquid Labs told Fortune that Jeff does not recall being interviewed by Novakovski.)

After Jeff graduated from Harvard, infamous cryptocurrency scammer Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) began to rise to fame. SBF founded his own crypto trading firm, Alameda Research, and is also developing FTX — his cryptocurrency exchange specializing in perpetual futures trading. Perpetual futures are a derivative that allows traders to speculate on the future price without holding the underlying asset. These contracts enable the use of leverage, amplifying both gains and losses.

Even as SBF mesmerized the entire crypto industry with his so-called genius rhetoric, Jeff and his team kept their distance, preferring to trade on platforms like Coinbase. "The relationship between Alameda and FTX is not clear to me," he said, "I don't think it's worth risking any of our funds or strategies in such an ambiguous relationship."

The Aftermath of FTX

FTX is a black box. SBF funneled billions of dollars of client funds into lavish real estate purchases, high-risk ventures, and lobbying activities. It wasn't until FTX declared bankruptcy that customers found out how much principal SBF had gambled away.

Jeff wanted to build a more transparent crypto perpetual futures trading platform. He and his team had considered building their own decentralized exchange before FTX's collapse, but "the FTX incident solidified my belief in the timely opportunity now," he said.

He is far from the first founder envisioning a decentralized trading platform. There are a few platforms like dYdX that cater to risk-tolerant traders who prefer not to engage with centralized exchanges like Coinbase. However, these decentralized platforms are often clunky, user-unfriendly, and slow. "The user experience (UX) of centralized exchanges is very good, almost all trading volume occurs on centralized exchanges, while in DeFi (decentralized finance) space, I don't think anyone really tried to reach that level at that time," Jeff said.

However, Jeff himself is a trader, and he and his team decided to build a platform they would be willing to use. "I think it's great when the people building the product are very familiar with who the customers are," said cryptocurrency founder Novakovski, who has interviewed Jeff.

According to a senior cryptocurrency executive who has seen both founders, unlike SBF, Jeff's image is more sophisticated, professional, and genuine. "Jeff irons his shirt, SBF doesn't," said the anonymous source, "SBF's shorts are too long, ill-fitting. Jeff, on the other hand, looks sharp and neat."

Unlike SBF and countless other cryptocurrency founders, Jeff and his team decided to reject venture capitalist funding. They had already earned significant revenue from their cryptocurrency trading business, and Jeff decided to foot the bill himself. "If we want to build a truly trusted neutral platform where anyone can build on top of it, then a very important principle is to not have 'insiders'," he said.

In 2023, Jeff and his team launched Hyperliquid and its underlying blockchain. According to DefiLlama data, trading volume had been steadily growing for months, but by early 2025, interest in the exchange had exploded.

Hyperliquid was optimized for speed. For many traders, a difference of seconds meant the gap between profit and loss. "I'm the user who always bugs the team to add more features, but they keep rejecting every feature I ask for because they want to maintain the platform's speed and ultimate flexibility," said Thanos Alpha, an anonymous Hyperliquid user who claims to be a power user of the platform.

The anonymous trader, who declined to reveal his real name, added that this speed, coupled with an engineering solution allowing Hyperliquid to accommodate larger-scale trades than its competitors, laid the foundation for its success. He described himself as a DeFi enthusiast but refused to disclose his real name — a common request among cryptocurrency die-hards.

Now, the ecosystem is attracting interest beyond anonymous cryptocurrency traders. According to The Information, major venture capital firms like Paradigm and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) hold positions in Hyperliquid's HYPE token. Even Wall Street and big corporations are taking notice. Financial technology giant PayPal posted about Hyperliquid on social media, while a slew of companies are racing to launch stablecoins branded on the Hyperliquid blockchain. David Schamis, founding partner of private equity firm Atlas Merchant Capital, is overseeing a publicly listed company that is accumulating HYPE. "This is not just about trading cryptocurrency," Schamis said when discussing blockchain technology.

The AWS of Finance

Jeff himself sees Hyperliquid as the AWS of the financial infrastructure space, akin to the cloud computing giant that underpins much of the internet. Developers are independently deploying various assets other than cryptocurrency to trade on the blockchain, including listed products tied to the stock prices of major companies like Nvidia and Google. And some validators (those who own servers actually processing transactions) earn income by supporting the ecosystem.

However, there is no guarantee that Hyperliquid will continue to expand, especially as competitors are attempting to challenge Hyperliquid's newly established dominance. This includes Novakovski, who later launched Lighter—an alternative crypto derivatives platform backed by Founders Fund, Ribbit Capital, David Sacks' Craft Ventures, and a16z crypto. Additionally, there is Aster, a Hyperliquid imitator closely associated with the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

Furthermore, like many crypto projects in the DeFi world, Hyperliquid operates in a murky legal gray area. Its users are all anonymous, not required to submit KYC documents, unlike traders accessing more traditional financial products like Robinhood. Taylor Monahan, Chief Security Researcher at the crypto wallet MetaMask, noted that users potentially linked to the notorious crypto hacking operations of North Korea have transacted on Hyperliquid. According to the crypto analysis firm Chainalysis, DeFi protocols are part of North Korea's money laundering efforts.

A spokesperson for Hyperliquid Labs stated that Hyperliquid's website conducts risk behavior screening on traders and enforces sanctions compliance, adding, "Any confirmed high-risk activities within the application will be promptly flagged, and the related addresses will be blocked."

Moreover, if Hyperliquid continues to grow, the ecosystem may attract more regulatory scrutiny. "A big question is how long this no-KYC operation style of theirs [Hyperliquid] will be allowed to exist," expressed a cryptocurrency market maker. KYC laws require financial institutions to collect user identity information. The market maker requested anonymity to speak more candidly.

"The bigger they get, the more pronounced this issue usually becomes," the market maker added.

"We are actively engaging with regulators and policymakers to provide greater clarity in support of decentralized finance," a Hyperliquid spokesperson responded.

As Hyperliquid navigates the evolving competitive landscape and regulatory environment, and strives to achieve Jeff's ambition of reshaping the financial infrastructure, the DeFi founder may continue to expand his team. This was also why he announced in late October the hiring spree and nearly 30% increase in Hyperliquid Labs' staff from 11 to 14 people.

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