Hyperliquid has achieved the highest revenue per employee globally, reaching $106 million, surpassing even Tether Limited – the previous record-holder – and many traditional tech corporations.
According to data from Hyperliquid France, Tether ranks second with $93 million per employee, while OnlyFans ranks third with $37.6 million. Notably, this decentralized derivatives exchange has only 11 core members, as CEO and co-founder Jeff Yan confirmed in a recent interview.
With a lean workforce, Hyperliquid still generates an estimated annual revenue of $1.167 billion, according to data from DefiLlama on August 20. Meanwhile, major tech corporations lag far behind: Nvidia achieves $3.6 million, Apple $2.4 million, and Meta $2.2 million per employee.
Hyperliquid's revenue primarily comes from decentralized perpetual futures trading fees. The platform collects a portion of swap fees into a fund, distributing it to token holders and through buyback programs, generating direct cash flow from trading volume without the need for a massive operational structure.
Hyperliquid's automated market-making system and derivative trading infrastructure are designed to operate with minimal personnel intervention, allowing the team to focus on developing and optimizing the protocol rather than managing daily operations.
Rapid revenue growth
Since December, Hyperliquid has recorded $589.11 million in revenue, demonstrating explosive growth in recent months. The revenue over the past 30 days reached $95.63 million, making Hyperliquid the third-largest revenue-generating crypto protocol, behind two stablecoin giants, Tether ($629.19 million) and Circle ($203.91 million). This result allows Hyperliquid to surpass many other big names like Tron, Jupiter, and Pump.fun.
Comparisons with traditional tech corporations show the superior efficiency of the decentralized financial model. While Apple requires about 164,000 employees to generate $383 billion in annual revenue, Hyperliquid's team of 11 can generate nearly $1.2 billion thanks to automated trading infrastructure.
The success of Hyperliquid affirms the potential of decentralized exchanges to achieve massive scale with minimal personnel, while also challenging traditional assumptions about how to generate revenue and organize operations in the financial industry.