In crypto, the path to success usually looks something like this: raise from VCs, launch a token, drop an airdrop, and ride the hype.
But what happens when a founder rejects all of it?
- No VCs.
- No presale.
- No flashy marketing.
- Just product, principles, and relentless focus.
That’s the story of Jeff Yan, the low-profile brain behind Hyperliquid—the fastest-growing derivatives platform in crypto and one of the only truly independent L1s still standing in 2025.
From Wall Street Engineering to Web3 Obsession
Most crypto founders are either Silicon Valley or Solidity-native. Jeff is neither.
Before building Hyperliquid, he:
- Medaled in the International Physics Olympiad
- Studied math and CS at Harvard
- Engineered at Google
- Designed high-frequency trading systems at Hudson River Trading (HRT)
At HRT, he helped shape algorithms that handled millions of trades per second, gaining intimate knowledge of latency, market microstructure, and liquidity provisioning.
But Jeff wasn’t content building for Wall Street. He left in 2018 to explore Ethereum, launching an L2 exchange years before rollups became viable.
It failed.
So he became a market maker instead, founding Chameleon Trading and operating deep inside crypto’s liquidity networks. When FTX collapsed in 2022, he was one of many professionals burned by centralized risk.
That moment changed everything.
Jeff realized crypto didn’t need just better tech. It needed a new model—one where decentralization wasn’t a meme, and performance wasn’t an afterthought.
Hyperliquid: Born in Silence, Built for Speed
In 2023, Hyperliquid launched with zero press. There was no airdrop, no VC pump, no pre-mined token.
Instead, users got:
- A CEX-grade UI
- Lightning-fast order matching
- Native L1 infrastructure, not a rollup
- Fully non-custodial trading with near-zero latency
It felt like Binance. But it was on-chain.
Traders noticed.
In less than 24 months:
- $250B+ monthly trading volume
- 75%+ market share in perpetual DEXs
- 700,000+ active users
- $772M in protocol revenue (2024)
- One of the largest airdrops ever: $1.2B worth of $HYPE to 94,000 users
All without a single dollar in venture funding.
Why Hyperliquid Wins: Design First, Hype Never
The real brilliance of Hyperliquid lies in what it refused to compromise:
- No VC influence means no token unlock pressure, no yield farming bait, no diluted vision
- No presale ensures clean token distribution and long-term community alignment
- No shortcuts on infrastructure—everything, from the consensus layer to the matching engine, was custom-built for one purpose: trading
While other exchanges copied Ethereum or relied on L2s, Hyperliquid took the longer route: build an L1 from scratch where execution, security, and composability can coexist.
And Then, It Got Bigger: HyperEVM and the New Financial Stack
In early 2025, Hyperliquid unveiled HyperEVM—an Ethereum-compatible environment stitched directly into its base Layer 1.
This wasn’t about chasing TVL.
It was about giving real use cases—lending, staking, asset issuance—a home where everything settles together:
- The same block
- The same gas model
- The same liquidity layer
From HyperSwap (spot AMM), to StakeHyper (liquid staking), to HyperLend (lending platform), the ecosystem has grown into a tightly integrated financial operating system, not a fragmented DeFi zoo.
HIP-3: A DEX That Eats TradFi
Jeff’s vision doesn’t stop at crypto perps.
With HIP-3, Hyperliquid is laying the groundwork to bring traditional markets on-chain:
- Stocks
- IPOs
- FX
- Commodities
- Prediction markets
These won’t be controlled by the Foundation. Instead, any dev can stake 1M $HYPE to create, operate, and earn from new markets, with slashing risk to ensure responsibility.
This isn’t just a DEX. It’s an open-source CME, governed by code and community, not clearinghouses.
Hyperliquid Is Proof That You Can Build Without Selling Out
In an industry full of pump-and-dumps, Jeff Yan proved something quietly radical:
You can win by doing less.
Less hype.
Less dilution.
Less noise.
More engineering.
More fairness.
More real users.
Hyperliquid didn’t just beat the incumbents. It rewrote the script on what a crypto exchange can be—and who it should belong to.
And it’s only getting started.
Read more Hyperliquid articles on the MevX Blog!
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