11 People, 900 Days, and a $16 Billion Heist from the Giants

In just over two and a half years, Hyperliquid has carved out dominance in the decentralized perpetual contract market. Looking just at the top 100 trading pairs last week, Hyperliquid crushed traditional players with an 82-18 ratio against one major exchange's volume. And they did this with just 11 people.

God, the numbers are insane. On August 20, company data showed Hyperliquid generating $102.4 million annual revenue PER EMPLOYEE. That's not just profitable—it's absurdly efficient in a way that makes traditional finance look bloated and pathetic.

I've watched their journey from the shadows. The quiet build phase, the wealth explosion from airdrops, and those valley moments when everyone doubted them. Now as HYPE hits its third all-time high this year, let me take you through this wild ride.

The Silent Build

Back in December 2022, Hyperliquid dropped their first tweet about launching a testnet. Nobody cared. While crypto Twitter was busy chasing the next PFP collection, founder Jeff was obsessing over his trading engine.

This guy isn't your typical crypto founder. After Harvard, he worked at Citadel doing quant trading research. He gets how traditional markets maintain order matching under extreme pressure—something most crypto exchanges still fail at miserably.

Instead of building on someone else's blockchain, Jeff insisted on creating his own Layer 1. Ballsy move. He wanted full control over every aspect: matching, clearing, risk controls. In hindsight, this stubborn vision was the key to everything.

Their Twitter was practically dead for months. In April 2023, they announced referral rewards to 81 addresses. Some poor bastard commented how thrilled he was about earning $3. Wonder if he's still holding—that $3 would be life-changing money now.

By May 2023, they launched their market-making vault "HLP"—the first tweet that actually got attention. Today that vault holds over $573 million. Of course, success breeds attacks, and by June, they faced their first exploit—someone manipulating CEX prices to profit on Hyperliquid. They patched it quickly, but this was just the beginning of their security battles.

November 2023 marked their turning point. Points system launched, $10 billion in volume hit, and by year's end, they'd flipped dYdX to become the top dog in decentralized perps. The sleeper was waking up.

The Explosion

In 2024, Jeff transformed from engineer to visionary. He started talking about building a "fully functional financial ecosystem on-chain" rather than just another trading platform.

By March, they expanded to spot trading and introduced native token standards. They launched $PURR, a meme coin that peaked at $600 million market cap. Not satisfied, they added native EVM support in May, making it clear they wanted users to live entirely within their ecosystem.

November 2024, $HYPE token launched at $6.25 and exploded to $35 within two weeks. Early adopters made life-changing money. Suddenly everyone was talking about Hyperliquid—even people who'd never touched a perpetual contract in their lives.

The Tests

Success always attracts enemies. In December, security researcher Tay claimed North Korean hackers had been active on the platform, losing over $700k. This raised serious questions about their validator security—they only had four validators! FOUR!

A day later, Hyperliquid dismissed these concerns, insisting no attack had happened and funds were safe. But the damage was done. In January, node operator Chorus One published an open letter highlighting multiple issues: frequent node shutdowns, closed-source code, and centralized API risks.

The real crisis hit in March 2025. A whale shorted JELLY token massively, and price volatility led to liquidation. The entire protocol vault faced collapse. Traditional exchanges smelled blood and launched competing JELLY contracts to attack Hyperliquid.

Their solution? They delisted JELLY and settled positions at $0.0095—way below market price. Some big names called them out hard. Arthur Hayes bet $HYPE would crash to zero, and one exchange CEO called them "immature, unethical" and "potentially FTX 2.0."

Yet $HYPE kept climbing, hitting new all-time highs by April.

Whale Playground

March 2025 brought the "Insider Guy"—a mysterious whale using 50x leverage with an uncanny win rate. Then James Wynn entered the chat, taking billion-dollar positions and briefly becoming a market legend before losing $21.77 million in principal after an $87 million profit run.

Just two days ago, an "ancient whale" who'd been dormant for seven years staked $1.25 billion of ETH through Hyperliquid, bringing their total to $2.55 billion—2.5 times the Ethereum Foundation's holdings. This single whale caused a 3% Bitcoin drop when they sold.

The whales love Hyperliquid because it offers centralized exchange execution with decentralized security.

The Reality

Crypto creates miracles, but challenging giants like the major exchanges with just 11 people is truly extraordinary. Jeff isn't your typical crypto showboat—he rarely gives interviews and doesn't have a marketing team.

Behind the success story was a long period of obscurity, doubt, and relentless building. Their journey has been anything but smooth, yet they've created something revolutionary.

In this industry of hype men and empty promises, Hyperliquid built something real—and the numbers don't lie.