Interview with Hyperliquid Founder Jeff: How 11 People Built a "Binance on the Chain"?

Hyperliquid is one of the most successful projects in this cycle. With a team of only 11 people, it has captured over 75% of the decentralized perpetuals market. At the time of this article’s publication, Hyperliquid’s user assets stand at approximately $6.2 billion, with HYPE (its token) boasting a market capitalization of nearly $16 billion and a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of nearly $46 billion, ranking 13th globally. The community even sees Hyperliquid as a potential successor to Binance.

In this episode, Jeff Yan, founder of Hyperliquid, shares with Colin, editor-in-chief of Wushuo, the journey and insights behind building a decentralized trading protocol. He discusses the importance of self-funding, reasons for rejecting venture capital, and the philosophy of adhering to user-driven growth. Jeff also outlines Hyperliquid’s vision for the future of decentralized finance, the logic behind not listing its token on centralized exchanges, and the team’s commitment to staying lean and efficient. Additionally, he shares his views on crypto entrepreneurship, leadership in the crypto industry, and how Eastern and Western cultural values have shaped his business approach.

The full audio and video can be listened to on major domestic and international audio platforms such as Xiaozhouyu (Little Universe). This article does not constitute any investment advice, and the interviewee’s views do not represent those of Wushuo. Readers are advised to strictly abide by the laws and regulations of their respective jurisdictions.

Jeff’s Background and Journey into the Crypto Space

Colin: Thank you, Jeff, for taking the time to join us. As we know, Hyperliquid has been one of the most influential crypto protocols over the past year. My first question is: could you share your experiences before founding Hyperliquid, and how those experiences shaped your path into the crypto industry?

Jeff: Absolutely. I grew up in the U.S. and graduated from Harvard in 2017 with degrees in mathematics and computer science. Even though it wasn’t that long ago, it felt like a very different era. Back then, most math majors wanted careers in math or computer science, but the options were limited. The startup scene was relatively mature, large-scale social media was fading, and AI wasn’t as hot as it is now.

So most of us faced a choice: stay in academia for research, or switch to quantitative trading. I chose Hudson River Trading (HRT), which was one of the major market makers in U.S. equities and other markets at the time (and I think it still is). The work environment there was great—like a startup, but focused on trading. I got to dive into interesting mathematical problems, understand how markets operate, and learn to apply quantitative thinking to markets.

Around 2018, I learned about Ethereum and thought it was really cool. I read the Ethereum whitepaper, got a basic understanding, and immediately realized it would be the future of finance. So after leaving HRT, I’ve been in the crypto space ever since. Starting around 2022, we did quantitative trading in crypto, looking at both centralized and decentralized exchanges. Then FTX collapsed, and we really saw its impact.

That’s when we realized people would start to understand the value of self-custody and be ready to trade cryptocurrencies in a decentralized way. At the same time, we noticed a gap in the market: an exchange that prioritizes both decentralized principles and user experience. So we thought, why not try to build a trading platform that adheres to decentralization while offering a great user experience? That’s been Hyperliquid’s DNA from the start.

Colin: Did you ever imagine Hyperliquid would be as successful as it is today when you first started?

Jeff: I definitely didn’t expect it to get this big. I’ve always been visionary—doing well comes down to working harder than others, staying committed, having a long-term vision, and keeping promises. The key is recognizing that things don’t happen overnight; you have to be willing to get back up after failure. I think that’s really true.

So we’ve always had that vision. Even now, I feel we have bigger goals. But of course, it would be foolish to say we knew it would get this big back then. It’s largely due to the team’s hard work, the community’s support for this important idea at critical moments, and a bit of luck. You can never say these things are inevitable.

Why Hyperliquid Chose to Be Self-Funded

Colin: Did you initially build Hyperliquid entirely with your own funds? Why did you choose to reject venture capital or other investments? What’s the philosophy behind that?

Jeff: Yes, Hyperliquid is completely self-funded. I don’t think I ever did this to make money. Before Hyperliquid, working in trading taught me that money is just a number. I don’t value material wealth much; I actually don’t care much about money. What matters to me is doing something interesting and valuable to the world. So I was happy to do it, even if it failed—just as long as we were prepared to succeed.

I do think Hyperliquid is unique because part of its vision—and actually, the entire vision—is to redefine how people interact with finance and value, and what that means for them. It’s hard to get people to try something very new and potentially unfamiliar.

One thing that resonated with many is that ownership should be community-driven. When Hyperliquid launched, the standard approach was to raise huge sums from venture capitalists to create hype—raising round after round, thinking, “We’re making progress because we raised $1 million last time, then $10 million, then $100 million.” But I always found that approach a bit hollow; it’s not real progress.

Real progress is users getting actual value from what you do, not early investors profiting from a small initial investment. That’s our vision, and I think it really struck a chord with people. We’re lucky to have everyone’s support for this vision.

Why Not List on Centralized Exchanges

Colin: Many have noticed that when Hyperliquid launched its token, it wasn’t listed on any centralized exchanges. Why did you choose that path?

Jeff: They could have listed HYPE anywhere. Our framework has always been focused on building and creating what users want, not worrying too much about what others do. We’re just focused—completely focused—on what we’re doing. We’re a very small team, and we don’t have a business development (BD) team. We have people who work with the community and ecosystem, but we don’t have full-time teams catering to institutions like other companies do.

So we don’t have the resources to handle listing processes. We figure each platform will decide whether to list us based on their own judgment, and we’re okay with any outcome. If a platform wants to list our token, that’s great—it means their users will be exposed to our product. If others don’t, that’s fine too; over time, they might—so long as we do our work and build the technology. It also means people who truly care about Hyperliquid will seek us out.

If there’s a passionate user who really cares about Hyperliquid but can’t find us, they might try to explore on their own. We don’t think that’s a bad outcome. But really, the root cause is just that we don’t have the capacity to do things beyond our core functions.

Advice for Crypto Startups

Colin: From your perspective, if you were to advise entrepreneurs with funds or resources, would you still suggest they pay less attention to token listings or venture capital?

Jeff: Not necessarily. I think if you need funding to do something, venture capital can be a good option. VCs make lots of investments and have plenty of capital. That way, startups don’t have to worry about short-term funding and can focus on building and scaling. So I think it has its place.

But if you have the capital and the ability to do something you truly believe in, personally, I think it’s better to avoid diluting overall ownership—since ownership stakes are fixed—rather than diluting them for short-term gains. Maybe it’s better if the community owns more. In the long run, that’s better and fairer. After all, they’re the most important part of the network, right?

The Role of Market Makers in Hyperliquid’s Growth

Colin: Did you collaborate with market makers early on to build Hyperliquid? Did they provide tokens or airdrops? I’ve heard rumors that major market makers helped Hyperliquid compete with Binance—Is that true?

Jeff: Basically, the answer is no. We don’t have any private arrangements, like profit-sharing agreements or investments. Some market makers did reach out, since that was common practice at the time.

Many decentralized exchanges raise funds and get capital from market makers, who double as investors providing liquidity and support. But we have no investors or such arrangements. Our thinking has always been that while this might create short-term challenges, it’s the right approach long-term.

Many centralized exchanges face criticism for their internal pools or designated market makers (DMMs). I think it’s especially important for decentralized exchanges to avoid such practices from the start. The only exception is HLP, but that’s a different story—it’s protocol-owned, and any user can deposit into it; it doesn’t belong to a single entity.

Hyperliquid’s Core Team and Hiring Strategy

Colin: How big is Hyperliquid’s core team now? What’s the team atmosphere like?

Jeff: We have 11 people now—about half engineers, half non-engineers. It’s a small team. The atmosphere is good; we’ve been through a lot together. I enjoy working with the team.

I think we’re doing a lot right, but there’s also much we can improve. We’re always trying to hire the best people. So we don’t want to stay this small forever, but we’re very selective about who we work with. I’ve always believed—or quickly learned—that hiring the wrong person is far worse than hiring no one.

Colin: Will you hire more people in the future? What kind of people are you looking for?

Jeff: We’re open to a bit of everything. It’s hard to predict because the future is uncertain, and Hyperliquid is still young but has already changed a lot. Initially, we were solely focused on being a user-friendly, high-performance decentralized perpetuals exchange. But now our vision is much bigger. Many teams are building on the platform, making the vision more ambitious and the technology more complex.

So what people need to do has changed a lot in this transition. It’s hard to predict what kind of people the team will need. All I can say is we need very smart, driven, high-integrity people—and most importantly, those genuinely passionate about what we’re building.

Ecosystem Projects

Colin: Does your team or foundation invest in ecosystem projects built on Hyperliquid?

Jeff: Well, I don’t speak for the foundation, but so far, the foundation hasn’t invested in any projects. I think staying neutral is important. Investing is possible, but it would require us or the foundation to spend a lot of time identifying truly valuable projects, ensuring fair treatment, and deciding how to allocate resources. Ultimately, that’s the job of venture capitalists. VC firms are investing in Hyperliquid ecosystem projects, which I think is good—it lets different people and capital decide where to allocate funds independently.

Hyperliquid’s Roadmap

Colin: What’s Hyperliquid’s future roadmap?

Jeff: We don’t focus too much on specific milestones. We usually have key initiatives in progress that we want to roll out soon, even though they’ll end up being quite complex. The system itself is complicated, so we need to be very careful about how we release these features. Beyond the long-term vision initiatives we’re pushing, we don’t plan many milestones. So we won’t make specific predictions like “we’ll do this in Q3.”

Right now, we’re focused on implementing HIP-3 and making spot and perpetual trading more accessible. We’re also improving system performance to handle increasing load.

These things keep us very busy. I don’t think knowing exactly what we’re doing next is particularly helpful. What’s more important is staying flexible, because this space changes very fast, and finance is evolving quickly. Being able to quickly understand what’s happening and adapt is crucial. A detailed roadmap might make it harder to do the right thing at the right time.

Hyperliquid’s Role in the Future of Decentralized Finance

Colin: Will Hyperliquid issue a stablecoin in the future? Will it enter the tokenized stock market?

Jeff: Hyperliquid will likely not do these things, because so far, it has evolved from an application to more of a protocol. What people see as the “app” is just a frontend—anyone can build one, essentially interacting with the blockchain via APIs. Our focus now is making the blockchain as efficient and scalable as possible, ensuring it has all the features needed to support any financial activity. Then others can build things like stablecoins, tokenization, or whatever else.

I think this approach has many benefits, because a single team’s capabilities are limited. We don’t want to build a huge, centralized team with many departments and top-down management. That doesn’t align with my view of crypto—or with how Satoshi or others in the crypto community envisioned the technology. Having one company build everything makes the technology less resilient and robust. Instead, if the core is a decentralized protocol that anyone can interact with, run independently, and remains objective and neutral, others can build on it, collaborate, compete, and combine efforts. It’s a very powerful system—and I think that’s how finance should work.

Hyperliquid’s Success vs. Larger Teams

Colin: You mentioned Hyperliquid’s core team has only 11 people. Companies like Binance or OKX have thousands—maybe 3,000 or 4,000. Why has Hyperliquid succeeded while many other decentralized exchanges struggle? What do you think is the reason?

Jeff: Well, I don’t really know much about other teams, so it’s hard to compare.

But I think a key reason is Hyperliquid’s focus. If you look at centralized exchanges, they’re actually running multiple businesses. They seem to have a core team, but there might also be a staking team, a marketing team, even an institutional team. Each of these feels like a separate company to me.

Each of these teams probably has ten times more people than Hyperliquid. But the key is, they’re also trying to do more in-house. I think it’s just a different perspective. If you look at Hyperliquid more broadly—as something anyone can build on the blockchain—many more people are involved. Any team building on Hyperliquid is probably larger than the core protocol team. So maybe that’s a better comparison.

Jeff’s Management Style and Leadership

Colin: What’s your management style? How do you lead a team in the crypto industry?

Jeff: I’m not sure what my management style is—you’d better ask the people I work with. But I think I have high expectations. Our team is very small, and the workload is heavy. So yes, I probably push people to do more than they’re comfortable with—but that’s probably true for every CEO or CTO.

I’m pretty hands-on. I try not to micromanage—just give people challenging tasks, and the stronger ones excel. I like letting them take full ownership.

But on the other hand, I think completely letting go doesn’t work. I’m still actively involved in technical work, staying on top of almost everything technical. It’s getting harder, but I think staying involved is crucial because what Hyperliquid does is important.

Everything is interconnected—it’s a blockchain, and node software ensures the system’s security. If that part gets messy, or people work at cross-purposes, it’s very dangerous. Correctness and performance are critical for scaling the system.

Leadership Philosophy and the Importance of Teamwork

Colin: Many young people or startups are choosing to enter AI. Do you still think there are many entrepreneurial opportunities in crypto? What advice would you give to these startups?

Jeff: Yes, I think there are plenty of opportunities. If you’re very smart, young, and ambitious, AI and crypto are definitely the two most obvious fields. But I agree that it’s not for everyone. AI has taken the spotlight, and that’s probably for a reason. Crypto has many unappealing aspects—there have been many irregularities in the past, and some persist—so I don’t blame people for being cautious.

Even so, I think there’s a lot worth building in crypto. It depends on the perspective. So far, much of the money made in crypto has been “extractive” rather than “additive.” There are many scam-like schemes—creating demand for a token, then easily selling it off. That’s very regrettable. It gives some people too much power and attracts those who want to abuse the system. From that angle, there’s not much worth building.

But from another angle: finance is outdated, its supporting infrastructure is outdated, and the only sustainable, effective way to upgrade it is to rebuild it from scratch with decentralized ownership and control. Then there’s plenty to do.

The financial industry itself is huge, and fintech is too. They’re currently bigger and more valuable than crypto. And I think crypto really offers the best solutions to these problems. So hopefully, in the next few years, there will be more real use cases. It seems like a golden opportunity, with policy changes and general optimism in tech.

I think the industry has a second chance to make a good impression and build something valuable. Once that happens, it will create a self-reinforcing cycle—more people will be inspired to build and create more examples. That’s what the industry really needs.

Jeff’s Cultural Background and Its Impact on Hyperliquid

Colin: Next question, a bit more personal—feel free not to answer. Are your parents Chinese immigrants? Do you speak Chinese?

Jeff: Yes, both my parents immigrated from China. So I’m a first-generation American, born and raised in the U.S. I’m a mix of Eastern and Western cultures.

I think many Eastern and Western values are complementary. In hindsight, that’s probably a key reason for Hyperliquid’s success—we combined the best of both. I think American and Western values are crucial for startup success, which is why most of the biggest startups are in the U.S. I think that will remain true as long as the world stays as it is.

These values include believing a small team can achieve great things, dreaming big, thinking independently, not taking the status quo for granted, and believing you can change the world. It’s a very American mindset, and as someone raised in the U.S., I strongly identify with it.

I don’t care much about politics—I just want to get things done—but these entrepreneurial values resonate with me. As for the Eastern part, I don’t know much about Chinese history, etc. I think a downside of my generation is that immigrants to a new country might lose touch with their roots.

So I feel some guilt about that, but I understand the principles. Traditionally, Chinese values emphasize humility, actions over words, and a strong work ethic. These have influenced how I work and build. Both worldviews are valuable and complementary—that’s how I see myself. And yes, I speak some Chinese, but it’s rusty because I don’t use it much.

Jeff’s Thanks to the Chinese Community and Thoughts on the Crypto Market

Colin: My last question: could you say something to the Chinese community or fans? They’ve been very supportive of Hyperliquid. And a more fun one—do you think we’re still in a bull market? What’s your prediction for Bitcoin in this cycle?

Jeff: Thank you for your support, really. It’s been a while since I’ve been to China, and I feel both close and distant.

It’s great to see them form such a large community and offer their support. Ultimately, Hyperliquid shouldn’t be bound by any boundaries—political, national, or otherwise. I truly believe in free markets and capitalism as the best way to promote prosperity and drive human progress.

Yes, prosperity is the right word. I see Hyperliquid as an extension of that idea. It’s cool to see people around the world support it and succeed by building on it—and I hope to keep supporting everyone in that process. As for the bull market, I’m not an expert; I have no idea.

I’ve always focused on automated trading, with an emphasis on understanding detailed market timeframes. My mental model is that long-term predictions are hard to make with confidence.

If you think you know, you’re probably wrong. I think the smartest people making long-term predictions have to do so with a lot of uncertainty. For example, if you asked Warren Buffett where Coca-Cola’s stock will be in five years, he wouldn’t say confidently that it will be huge. He’d probably give a vague answer about fundamentals, something like that.

So it’s not my area of expertise, but I don’t think it matters much. If your main focus is buying and selling tokens, bull and bear markets matter. But if you’re focused on building, their impact is smaller. In a way, building when the market is calmer is better—fewer distractions. That’s always been my approach.