Written by: Cookie, Jaleel plus six
In just over two and a half years, Hyperliquid has firmly established its leading position in the decentralized perpetual contract market. If only counting the top 100 perpetual contract trading pairs, last week, Hyperliquid's perpetual contract trading volume had already formed an "82 ratio" with Binance's perpetual contract trading volume denominated in USD.
Achieving such success, Hyperliquid's core team consists of only 11 people. On August 20, HyperliquidFR announced data showing that Hyperliquid generated an average annual revenue of $102.4 million per employee, becoming the highest revenue-generating company per capita globally.
Looking back at the development journey of Hyperliquid, there have been periods of obscurity, a remarkable airdrop that created wealth, and even times of low points. As $HYPE hits a historic high for the third time this year, let's review the legendary journey of Hyperliquid together.
Hibernation
On December 27, 2022, Hyperliquid sent its first tweet, announcing the launch of the Hyperliquid L1 testnet.
During that relatively unnoticed hibernation period, Hyperliquid's founder Jeff was focused on building his underlying logic. He had worked on quantitative and high-frequency trading research at Citadel, was educated at Harvard, and grew up in Silicon Valley, understanding how traditional financial systems maintain matching efficiency and fund security under extreme pressure.
"How to make on-chain trading have a Wall Street-level execution experience," this has been a question Jeff has been pondering. Against this backdrop, Jeff chose not to build a contract trading platform on existing public chains, but insisted on creating a new Layer 1, keeping the entire matching, clearing, and risk control system in his own hands.
In the following months, Hyperliquid's official Twitter account did not show much improvement. On April 20, 2023, Hyperliquid's tweet announced that referral rewards were issued to 81 addresses. A user in the comments expressed joy at earning a $3 reward, and presumably, in the future, such early participation would bring him rich returns far exceeding that $3; it's uncertain whether he envisioned a bright future at that time.
On May 17, 2023, Hyperliquid announced the launch of the community-owned native market-making vault "HLP," which became Hyperliquid's first tweet to receive significant attention. Currently, the TVL of HLP has reached approximately $573 million.
On June 17, 2023, HLP suffered its first attack. The attacker manipulated the price of $SNX on CEX, sold $SNX on Hyperliquid, and then closed positions on CEX, making a profit of about $37,000. Hyperliquid quickly made adjustments, and at this point, Hyperliquid must have foreseen that as it developed, HLP would face more tests.
On November 1, 2023, Hyperliquid launched its points system. On the 24th of the same month, Hyperliquid announced that the platform's total trading volume had reached $10 billion. By the end of 2023, Hyperliquid announced that its total trading volume had reached $21 billion, with over 31,000 users, and in the first week of 2024, the weekly trading volume surpassed dYdX, becoming the leader in the decentralized perpetual contract market.
It can be said that Hyperliquid has already entered a phase of rapid development since then. The leader is subtly emerging from the water, and the hibernation is about to end.
Remarkable
If the hibernation period Jeff was a dedicated engineer, then in 2024's "remarkable" phase, he has begun to exhibit clearer strategic ambitions. Hyperliquid is not content with merely leading the contract market; Jeff has emphasized on multiple occasions that he hopes Hyperliquid will become a "fully functional financial ecosystem on-chain," rather than just a single Perp DEX.
Thus, on March 29, 2024, Hyperliquid announced it would support native spot trading and introduced two native token standards, HIP-1 and HIP-2. HIP-1 is a native token protocol that allows users to issue custom tokens on Hyperliquid L1. HIP-2 is a liquidity solution that provides market-making strategies for tokens issued under HIP-1, ensuring liquidity without relying on external platforms like Raydium.
At the same time, Hyperliquid also announced that the first token to be listed for spot trading would be the meme coin $PURR issued by itself, on Hyperliquid L1. $PURR is the first gift for all users who participated in the Hyperliquid points system, with a peak market value exceeding $600 million, and still holds a market value of $108 million, making it the largest native meme coin by market cap on Hyperliquid L1.
On May 20, 2024, Hyperliquid announced it would support native EVM, a plan indicating that Hyperliquid was not satisfied with the success of its contract products but had greater ambitions to build an ecosystem, hoping to possess the ability to allow users to fully embrace the Hyperliquid ecosystem without relying on CEX or other blockchains.
On November 29, 2024, Hyperliquid's native token $HYPE was launched, with a closing price of $6.25 on the first day. Early users reaped substantial rewards, but even greater surprises lay ahead, as within less than half a month, $HYPE surged over fivefold, reaching a peak of $35.
Twitter was filled with discussions about $HYPE, and whether or not one was a contract player, people began to learn about the existence of Hyperliquid.
Test
A tall tree attracts the wind. After almost smoothly developing rapidly, Hyperliquid quickly faced its first test after the issuance of $HYPE.
On December 30, 2024, renowned security researcher Tay (@tayvano_) posted a warning on Twitter—multiple identified North Korean hacker addresses traded on Hyperliquid from October 29, 2024, to December 18, 2024, incurring losses of over $700,000.
Although Hyperliquid had not shown any signs of being attacked at that time, this could also mean that Hyperliquid has already been viewed as a potential attack target by North Korean hackers. In a tweet, Tay also mentioned, "If I were one of Hyperliquid's four validators, I would already be scared to the point of soiling my pants," which sparked discussions in the market about the security risks posed by Hyperliquid having too few validators.
A day later, according to an official announcement, Hyperliquid Labs stated that it had become aware of reports regarding the activities of so-called North Korean hacker addresses. In fact, Hyperliquid did not suffer any attacks from North Korean hackers—there was no form of attack at all. All user funds have been properly managed.
On January 7, 2025, node operator Chorus One published an open letter on Twitter, detailing multiple issues with the Hyperliquid testnet, including frequent node shutdowns, operational difficulties due to closed-source code, and single point of failure risks from centralized APIs, proposing several improvement suggestions aimed at enhancing the transparency and decentralization of the chain.
In response to these issues, Hyperliquid founder Jeff replied and emphasized that the validator selection criteria have been explained in the announcement; Hyperliquid's official account also separately published on the X platform to clarify the issues mentioned in the letter and stated that the node code would be opened under secure conditions.
On March 27, 2025, Hyperliquid fell into a market-wide controversy. A whale established a large number of JELLY short positions on Hyperliquid, leading to a sudden significant price fluctuation in the JELLY token that caused it to be liquidated. Hyperliquid's counterparty vault faced a near liquidation situation, putting the entire protocol vault at risk of going to zero. Meanwhile, CEXs took advantage of the situation, launching JELLY contracts to target and hunt Hyperliquid.
The incident ended with Hyperliquid delisting the JELLY token and settling the short position taken over at a price of $0.0095 (far below market price), without losing any funds. However, the FUD continues. Arthur Hayes stated on Twitter that Hyperliquid could not handle the JELLY incident, that it was not decentralized at all, and don't think traders actually care about this matter; dare to bet that $HYPE will soon drop back to its original point. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen even stated that Hyperliquid's handling of the incident was immature, unethical, and unprofessional, and Hyperliquid could become FTX 2.0.
This incident did not hinder Hyperliquid's progress. After the first week of April, $HYPE began to regain its upward momentum, continuously setting new historical highs.
Whale's Preference
In March 2025, Hyperliquid was first brought to market attention due to the actions of a whale. At that time, a "Hyperliquid 50x leverage whale" appeared, widely noticed for earning massive profits through high win rates and high leverage trading, and was thus referred to as "Insider Brother."
In May, James Wynn and this "Insider Brother" staged a long-short showdown, where James Wynn's positions once exceeded one billion dollars, ultimately achieving victory.
But soon, he encountered a massive failure. James Wynn had made a profit of up to $87 million by the end of May, but subsequently not only returned all profits but also lost $21.77 million in principal, having opened a position worth $1.23 billion in BTC on Hyperliquid at the peak.
But whether the whales succeed or fail, the movements of whales on Hyperliquid have already become one of the important barometers of the market, becoming a living brand for Hyperliquid.
Two days ago, according to Arkham's on-chain data analysis, a whale, also known as the "ancient whale that dramatically swapped ETH after sleeping for seven years," staked $1.25 billion worth of ETH again. So far, this unknown whale has purchased $2.55 billion worth of ETH through Hyperliquid (Hyperunit) and has staked it all.
So many ETH, in the ETH total holdings ranking on Ethscan, can now rank in the top 10, which is about 2.5 times the current ETH holdings of the Ethereum Foundation. This whale has had a significant impact on the Bitcoin market, with the sell-off causing Bitcoin to experience a 3% drop. Perhaps wanting to maintain mystery, this whale used Hyperliquid to operate.
Providing CeFi-level trading experiences on a completely decentralized Layer 1, Hyperliquid has achieved this, which is the core reason for the whales' preference.
Conclusion
The crypto world is indeed a place where miracles happen. Considering that Hyperliquid challenges giants like Binance and OKX, and looking at Hyperliquid's development speed and revenue scale, it's hard not to exclaim that Hyperliquid is yet another "crypto miracle."
Looking back on Hyperliquid's journey, it's easy for people to focus on those dazzling numbers and stories. But if we zoom in, we find that Hyperliquid's temperament is actually Jeff's temperament.
Jeff is not a founder who likes to appear frequently in public, rarely accepting interviews and almost never engaging in excessive marketing. In a recent interview, he mentioned that Hyperliquid has only 11 team members and no internal marketing team.
Behind the beautiful story, Hyperliquid has also experienced a period of unknown hibernation growth, facing various doubts and tests. And now, they continue to persevere and will continue to reap rewards.
