Exclusive interview with Hyperliquid founder Jeff: How 11 people built "Binance onchain"?
Hyperliquid is one of the most successful projects in this cycle. With a team of only 11 people, it has already captured more than 75% of the decentralized perpetual market share, with user assets reaching approximately US$6.2 billion. The project token market value is nearly US$16 billion, ranking 13th. It is even considered by the community to be the next Binance.
In this episode, Jeff Yan, the founder of Hyperliquid, shares insights into the journey of building the decentralized Layer 1 blockchain. He discusses the importance of self-funding, rejecting venture capital, and the focus on user-driven growth. Jeff explains Hyperliquid’s vision for a decentralized financial future, the rationale behind not pursuing token listings on centralized exchanges, and Hyperliquid Labs’ commitment to a small, efficient team. He also offers his perspective on the future of crypto startups, leadership in the crypto space, and how cultural values play a role in his approach to business.
The audio transcription is done by GPT and may contain errors. Please listen to the complete podcast:
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Jeff’s Background and Path to Crypto
Colin: Thank you for your time, Jeff. And as we know, Hyperliquid is the most influential crypto protocol in the last year. So my first question is, can you walk us through your journey before funding Hyperliquid and how your work experience shaped your path to crypto?
Jeff: Sure. So I grew up in the US, graduated in 2017 from Harvard, studying math and computer science. Back then, it wasn’t that long ago, but it felt like a very different time. Everyone who studied math was interested in working in math or computer science, but there weren’t many options. The startup scene was a bit more developed, and the big social media stuff was kind of over. AI hadn’t really gotten that big yet.
So, most of us had to decide between staying in academia and doing research, or going into quantitative trading. I chose to go to Hudson River Trading, which, at the time, and I think still is, one of the biggest market makers in US equities and other things. It was a great environment — kind of a startup vibe, but doing trading. I got to think about a lot of interesting math and learn about markets and how to apply quantitative thinking to them.
And around 2018, I learned about Ethereum and thought it was super cool. I basically read the yellow paper, heard a bit about it, and just thought this is going to be the future of finance. So, since leaving HRT, I’ve basically been in crypto the whole time. By around 2022, we were doing quantitative trading in crypto, looking at both centralized and decentralized venues. It was around then that FTX collapsed, and we really saw the impact.
At that point, we felt like people were going to understand the value of self-custody and be ready to trade crypto in a decentralized way. At the same time, we saw that there was a lack of a user-friendly exchange that was also focused on decentralized principles. So we figured, why not try to build something that satisfies both the decentralized principles and focuses on a great user experience? And that’s the DNA of Hyperliquid from the beginning.
Jeff’s Early Days in Building Hyperliquid and Its Success
Colin: Got it. So can you share more about the early days of building Hyperliquid? Also, at first, would you have ever thought Hyperliquid would be as successful as it is today? Some even call Hyperliquid as the next Binance. Do you agree with that?
Jeff: Definitely didn’t think that it would necessarily be this big. I think I’ve always dreamed big. It’s easy to do very well just by working harder than other people, having faith, and also having a long-term vision and commitment. It’s important to realize that things aren’t built quickly, and you have to be willing to bounce back from failure and things like that. So I do think all of that is true.
So, I think we always had this vision. Even now, I think we still have bigger versions of what it can be. But of course, back then, it would have been foolish to say that we knew it would be big. A lot of it is hard work from the team, a lot of it is the community rallying behind an important idea at the right time, and I think a lot of it is also just luck. You can never say that something like this was a sure thing.
Why Hyperliquid Was Self-Funded
Colin: So I think the community also has a question about that. Did you build Hyperliquid entirely with your own funds at first? And why did you choose to reject all venture or other people’s investments? What’s the philosophy behind this decision?
Jeff: Yeah, it has entirely been self-funded. I think I just… I was never really doing it for money. I think trading, even before Hyperliquid, taught me that money is really just a number. I’m not super materialistic. I don’t actually care about money. For me, it’s about doing something interesting and valuable to the world. So, I was pretty happy to just go with it, even if it failed. Just, you know, whatever, and optimize for the success case.
I do think Hyperliquid is very unique because part of the vision, well, I guess the whole vision, is kind of reinventing how people interact with finance and value, and what that means for them. With such a radical goal, pushing people to try something radically new and maybe unfamiliar is tough.
One thing that resonated with a lot of people was that ownership should be community-driven. When Hyperliquid started, the standard thing to do was raise big rounds from VCs and generate a lot of excitement — raising one round after another, feeling like, “Oh, we’re making progress because the last round we raised was $1 million, and now this one is $10 million, then $100 million.” But that always felt kind of fake to me. That’s not real progress.
Real progress is users actually getting value from what you’re building, and users being able to benefit from the upside — not a bunch of investors who just threw some money in at an early stage. So that was the vision, and I think it really spoke to a lot of people. We were fortunate that everyone could rally behind that vision.
Not Listing on Centralized Exchanges
Colin: Also, many people noticed that when Hyperliquid issued its token, it was not listed on any centralized exchanges. Why did you choose to do that? Is there a strategic reason for not listing on platforms like Binance or Coinbase?
Jeff: They could have listed it wherever they wanted. Our framework has always been focused on building and creating what users want, without caring too much about what others are doing. We just stay focused, laser-focused on what we’re doing. We’re a super small team, and we don’t have a business development team. We have people who work with the community and ecosystem, but we don’t have an institutional-facing full-time team like many other companies do.
So, we didn’t have the capacity to help with listings. We thought that, essentially, everyone would come to this decision on their own, and we were happy either way. If some platform wants to list it, that’s cool, because it means their users will get exposure. If other platforms don’t list it, that’s also fine because over time, they’ll probably list it anyway — assuming we do our work and build good technology. It also just means that people who really care about Hyperliquid will come to us.
Let’s say there’s an enthusiastic user who really cares about Hyperliquid but can’t find it — maybe they’ll just go and try it out themselves. We thought that’s not a bad outcome either. But really, it all stemmed from just a lack of capacity to do more than our core functions.
Advice for Crypto Startups: Funding and Listing Strategies
Colin: So from your perspective, if you were to give advice to startup builders who have money or power, would you still suggest that they not pay much attention to listing or venture capital?
Jeff: Not necessarily. I think if you need capital to do something and your choices are between raising money to do it or not doing it at all, I think that’s where VC can be a win. The VC gets to take many bets and they have a lot of capital. Then the startup doesn’t have to worry about funding its operations for a short period of time and can just focus on building and scaling. So I think it has its place.
But I guess, if you have capital and the ability to do something and you really believe in it, I personally think it makes more sense to, let’s say, instead of diluting the overall ownership — because the pie’s percentage is fixed — to not dilute it with someone who can only provide short-term benefits. Maybe, if the community can own more of the pie, it’s better. Long-term, it’s better. It’s more fair. These are the most important people for the network, right?
The Role of Market Makers in Hyperliquid’s Development
Colin: Also, my next question is, did you cooperate with any market makers to build Hyperliquid at first? Will they offer tokens or airdrops? I heard a rumor that some important market makers helped Hyperliquid compete with Binance. Is that true?
Jeff: Basically, no. There were no private arrangements, like profit-sharing deals or investments. We were approached by a bunch of market makers, similar to investors, because it was a very standard playbook back then.
Many decentralized exchanges would raise money and then raise funds from market makers. The idea was that market makers, who were also investors, would provide liquidity and help. But we had no investors and no such arrangements. The thought was always that, while it might make things a bit harder in the short term, it’s the right way to do it long term.
Many centralized exchanges received backlash for their internal desks or DMM (Designated Market Maker) practices. I think, for a decentralized exchange, it’s even more important to avoid any of that from day one. The only exception here is HLP, but that’s a completely different thing because HLP is protocol-owned, and any user could deposit into it. It’s not owned by any single entity.
Hyperliquid’s Core Team and Hiring Strategy
Colin: So how big is the Hyperliquid core team today? And what’s the dynamic like working with such a talented group?
Jeff: Yeah, we’re 11 people, and it’s about half engineering and half non-engineering. It’s very small. The dynamic is pretty good, I guess. We kind of go through thick and thin together. I have a good time working with our team.
I think there’s a lot we do well, but there’s also a lot we could do better. We’re always trying to hire the very best people. So it’s not like we want to necessarily stay super small forever, but we’re very picky about who we work with. I’ve always believed, or I quickly learned early on, that hiring the wrong person is much worse than not hiring anyone at all.
Colin: So, will you hire more people in the future? And what kind of people do you want?
Jeff: We kind of want everything. It’s hard to know because the future is so uncertain, and Hyperliquid itself is still quite young but has changed over time. Initially, the focus was entirely on being a user-friendly, high-performance decentralized perps exchange. But now the vision is so much bigger. There are so many teams building on the platform, and its vision has grown much grander, and the technical complexity has increased.
So, in that transition, the number of things that people need to do has changed a lot. It’s really hard to predict what kinds of people the team will need. I would just say very smart, driven people with high integrity, and people who are genuinely passionate about what we’re building.
Investing in Ecosystem Projects
Colin: Will your team or the foundation invest in ecosystem projects built on Hyperliquid?
Jeff: Well, I don’t speak for the foundation, but so far, it has not invested in anything. I think it’s important to remain neutral. Investing can work, but it would require us or the foundation to spend a lot of time finding all the genuine efforts, making sure they’re treated fairly, and deciding where to allocate resources. Ultimately, that’s the job of venture capitalists. VCs are investing in Hyperliquid ecosystem projects, and I think that’s great because it allows different people and different capital to decide for itself where it should go.
Hyperliquid’s Roadmap
Colin: So, what’s Hyperliquid’s roadmap for the future? Are there any big milestones you’re excited about and want to share with the community?
Jeff: We don’t focus too much on milestones. We often have a few big things that are actively being worked on. I feel like those things should be launched quickly, though they end up being very complex. The system itself is complex, so we need to be very mindful about how things are rolled out. Other than the few things we’re working on in the long-term vision, we don’t do a lot of milestone planning. So we don’t have projections like, “One quarter, we’ll do this,” or anything like that.
Right now, the big things are HIP-3 implementation and making spot trading and perpetual trading more general. We’re also improving the system’s performance due to the continually increasing load.
That kind of stuff just keeps us busy all the time. I don’t think it’s that helpful to know the next set of things we’re working on. It’s also important to be responsive because a lot of the space is changing very quickly — finance is evolving fast. Being able to quickly understand what’s going on and adapt is crucial. If we had a very detailed roadmap, it might be harder to do the right thing at the right time.
Hyperliquid’s Role in the Future of Decentralized Finance
Colin: So, will Hyperliquid issue a stablecoin in the future? Also, will Hyperliquid enter the tokenized stock market?
Jeff: Hyperliquid likely will not do any of these things, because at this point, Hyperliquid has transitioned from more of an application in its early days to more of a protocol now. What people think of as the application is really just a front-end that anyone could create, essentially having an API for that front-end to interact with the blockchain. The focus now is to make the blockchain as performant and scalable as possible and to ensure it has all the right features to support all of finance on that blockchain. Then, others come in and build things like stablecoins, tokenization, or anything else.
I think this approach has a lot of benefits because one team can only do so much. We’re not really interested in building a very large, centralized team with many departments and top-down control. That doesn’t align with how I think crypto, or maybe Satoshi or other people in crypto, envisioned things. It goes against the principles of the technology itself. It’s a lot less resilient and less robust if there’s one company building everything. Instead, if the core is a decentralized protocol that anyone can interact with, self-operates, and remains objective and neutral, then everyone else can build on top of it, cooperate, compete, and compose with each other. That’s a very powerful system, and I think that’s how finance should work.
Hyperliquid’s Success Compared to Larger Teams
Colin: Okay, you just told us that the Hyperliquid core team only has 11 people. We know that companies like Binance or OKX have maybe more than 3 or 4 thousand people. So why is Hyperliquid so successful, while many other DEXs are struggling? What do you think the reasons are?
Jeff: Well, I don’t really know what goes on in the other teams, so it’s hard for me to speak. It’s hard for me to compare.
But I think one big thing is that Hyperliquid is very focused. It’s not really a fair comparison because if you look at a centralized exchange, they’re really running like 10 businesses. It feels like they have the core team, but then they probably have a staking team, a marketing team, and probably an institutional team. In my mind, each of these things is kind of like a separate company.
Each of those companies probably still has, you know, 10 times more people than Hyperliquid. But the point is, they’re also trying to do a lot more in-house. I think it’s just a different perspective. If you think of Hyperliquid more broadly, as something that anyone can do on the blockchain, then I think there are a lot more people working on it. Any one team working on Hyperliquid might be bigger than the core team working on the protocol. So maybe that’s a better comparison.
Jeff’s Management Style and Leadership
Colin: Okay, so can I ask what your management style is like and how you lead a team in the crypto industry?
Jeff: I’m not sure what my management style is. You’d probably be better off asking someone I work with. But I think I expect a lot from people. I mean, we’re such a small team, and we’re trying to do a lot. So, yeah, I think I probably push people to do more than maybe they’re comfortable doing, but that might just be true for every CEO or CTO role.
I’m pretty hands-on. I try not to micromanage at all — just give people tough tasks, and the bigger the thing someone can do themselves, the better. I like to give them full ownership.
But on the other hand, I think it’s very dangerous to just step back. I’ve always been very involved in the technical side, like knowing almost everything that’s going on with the technical side at any point in time. It gets harder and harder, but I think it’s really important to hold on to as long as possible, because with what Hyperliquid is building, it’s very important.
Everything interacts — it’s one blockchain, one piece of node software that secures the whole thing. If that gets unruly or out of hand, with different people working on it from different perspectives, clashing, that’s very dangerous. The correctness and performance are so critical to making it scale.
Leadership Philosophy and Importance of Team Dynamics
Colin: Another question is, actually, most young people or startups join the AI field, and many people think there are so many chances to start something in the crypto field. As we know, Hyperliquid may be one of the very important or successful startups from last year. So do you still think there are many startup opportunities in crypto? And what would you say to these startups? Do you have any advice?
Jeff: Yeah, I think there’s a lot to do. I think if you’re very smart, young, and ambitious, AI and crypto are definitely the obvious fields to work in. I do think there’s a mismatch in talent, like you said. AI definitely takes the spotlight, probably for good reason. A lot of things in crypto don’t have the best reputation, and there have been many sketchy things that happened and continue to happen, so I don’t really blame people for being cautious.
That said, I think there are a lot of really interesting things to be built in crypto. It’s all about perspective. Up until now, most of the successful money made in crypto has been extractive, not additive. A lot of it was scam-style things, like just creating demand for a token and then making it easy to sell that token. I think that’s very unfortunate. It gives people a lot of power but also attracts people who want to abuse the system. If you look at it from that perspective, then yeah, there’s not much to build.
But if you take the perspective that finance is outdated, and the rails that power it are outdated, and the only way to upgrade it sustainably and impactfully is to rewrite it from the ground up with decentralized ownership and control, then there’s so much to do.
The finance industry itself is so large, and the fintech industry is also huge. Both of them are much bigger and more valuable than the crypto industry currently. I think crypto really offers the best solution to these problems. So, hopefully, over the coming years, there will be more genuine usage. It seems like this could be a golden time, with all the policy changes and general optimism around the technology.
I think the space has a second chance to make a good impression and build valuable things. Once that happens, there will be a self-reinforcing cycle, where more people will be inspired to build and create more examples. I think that’s really all the space needs.
Jeff on His Cultural Background and Its Impact on Hyperliquid
Colin: So the next question may be more personal. If you don’t want to answer it, that’s okay. Actually, we’re crypto media from China, and some of my friends in Hong Kong are also big fans of Hyperliquid and have earned a house through Hyperliquid, I think. So, you were born in the US, but your parents moved from China to the US, right? Can you speak Chinese?
Jeff: Yeah, so my parents are both immigrants from China. So I think that makes me first-generation; I was born and raised in the US. I guess I’m kind of a mix.
I think a lot of Eastern and Western values are very complementary. That might be a big reason for Hyperliquid’s success now that I think about it. We kind of take the best from both. I think American and Western values are essential for a startup’s success, which is why, by and large, the biggest startups are in America. I think that will continue to be true as long as the world stays the way it does.
These values are things like believing that a small team can do something, dreaming big, but also thinking individually, not taking the status quo as a given, but believing you can change the world. That’s a very American way of thinking, and it’s something I really identify with as someone who grew up there.
I’m not very political, I just want to build, but I think these founding values resonate with me. On the Eastern side, I’m not as well-versed in Chinese history and things like that. One of the downsides, I suppose, of my generation is that if you move to a new country, you kind of lose touch with your roots.
So, I feel a little bad about that, but I understand the principles at a high level. Traditionally, Chinese values are more about humility, doing more than talking, and a strong work ethic. These things have inspired the way I work and build. Both of these worldviews — Eastern and Western — are very valuable and complementary. That’s how I think about myself. I do speak some Chinese, but it’s definitely gotten worse because I don’t use it much anymore.
Colin: But yeah, it’s okay. Maybe next time we can use Chinese to do an interview or podcast.
Jeff: Especially all the technical stuff. I don’t know how to say it in Chinese because I mainly work in English.
Colin: Okay, that’s fine.
Jeff’s Gratitude to the Chinese Community and Thoughts on the Crypto Market
Colin: So I think my final question is, can you say something to the Chinese community or the Chinese fans? They’ve been very supportive of Hyperliquid. Also, maybe some more interesting questions — do you still think the bull market is on? And what’s your prediction about Bitcoin in this cycle?
Jeff: “谢谢你们的支持，非常感谢” (Thank you for your support — truly appreciate it.) I haven’t been to China for a while, and it feels both very close and very far at the same time.
It’s very cool that they’re such a big community and that they’re supportive. Ultimately, Hyperliquid is not supposed to be constrained by any boundaries, whether that’s political, national, or anything like that. I really believe in free markets and capitalism, and I think that’s the best way to increase prosperity and advance humanity.
Yeah, prosperity is the best word. I think Hyperliquid is an extension of that. It’s really cool to see people from all around the world rally behind it and succeed by building on it, and I hope to continue supporting everyone in that process. As for the bull market, I’m not really an expert in that area. I don’t know at all.
I’ve always focused on automated trading, and my focus has been on understanding markets at a detailed timeframe. My mental model is that, on long timeframes, it’s very hard to make confident predictions.
If you think you know, then you’re probably wrong. I think the smartest people who can make long-term predictions have to make those predictions with a lot of uncertainty. For example, if you ask Warren Buffett where Coca-Cola stock will be in five years, he wouldn’t say for sure that it will be big. He would probably just give a vague answer about fundamentals and so on.
So, that’s not my area of expertise, but I don’t think it matters that much. If your primary focus is buying and selling tokens, then the bull and bear markets matter a lot. But if your focus is building, then it doesn’t matter as much. In some ways, building when things are quieter is actually better because there are fewer distractions. That’s always been my approach.
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