Hyperliquid: How an 11-Person Crypto DEX Is Making $1 Billion Annually (No Big Deal!)

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So, Hyperliquid-a company with a mere eleven employees-is apparently pulling in over $1 billion a year. Yes, you read that right. Eleven. Not a typo, not a mistake. Just 11. One. One-and-one. You get it, right? But how, you ask? Grab your beverage of choice (preferably not something you can spill on your keyboard) and let’s dive in.

The majority of this revenue comes from trading fees on their decentralized perpetuals exchange. Yes, it’s that simple. According to DefiLlama, they’ve racked up a whopping $610M in cumulative fees (that’s since the protocol launched), and nearly 97% of that is pure protocol revenue. Cha-ching!

But here’s the kicker: Their growth trajectory has been suspiciously, almost alarmingly, consistent. By mid-August 2025, cumulative fees hit $481.6M, with revenue at $460.9M. The gap? Less than 5%. These numbers are practically doing synchronized swimming together.

So, How Do Eleven People Do This?

Ah, here comes the fun part. How does a team of 11 (yes, we’re still talking about 11) pull this off? Well, it probably has a lot to do with the founder’s philosophy. Jeff Yan, a man with strong opinions (and clearly some serious business acumen), rejected venture capital. He figured that VCs have this nasty habit of inflating valuations without actually delivering any tangible results. So, Yan kept the company self-funded, focusing solely on product development and, you guessed it, community.

This minimalist approach has allowed Hyperliquid to scale at a ridiculous pace. Roughly half of their staff are engineers (because engineering is *important* when you’re moving billions in daily volume), shipping upgrades like HLP3. Yan even pointed out that hiring the wrong person is worse than hiring no one at all. Can’t argue with that logic!

Before all this, Yan was a co-founder of Chameleon Trading (a centralized exchange). After launching Hyperliquid Labs with his Harvard classmate Iliensinc, they pulled in a crew of incredibly bright people. We’re talking about folks from Caltech, MIT, Citadel, and Hudson River Trading. Essentially, the Avengers of finance.

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2025-08-20 15:46