One of the many remarkable features of crypto is how often upstarts appear out of nowhere and, in a year or less, become one of the industry’s top dogs. This happened in 2017 when Binance exploded on the scene, and in 2023 when Blur gobbled up the NFT market (RIP) from OpenSea. Now, the same thing is happening in DeFi where Hyperliquid—and its 11 or so employees—is doing more than $100 billion in trading volume while going toe-to-toe with long-established giants like Binance and Bybit.
It was only after reading this smart Hyperliquid profile, by Fortune Crypto’s Ben Weiss and Leo Schwartz, that I came to appreciate what a big deal the platform has become. This is in part thanks to its no-nonsense cofounder Jeff Yan, whose credentials include a Harvard degree and a gold in the International Physics Olympiad. But it is also due to Hyperliquid’s being a decentralized platform that is winning market share from centralized exchanges.
The market Hyperliquid is winning is admittedly an esoteric one, consisting of pro traders who leverage up to sling a popular derivative called “perps” (for perpetual futures). Most of us, including those well versed in crypto, will get rekt going anywhere near these things. But, though they are not mainstream, the sheer volume of money involved in perps trading means that sites that offer it can make out very well indeed. In Hyperliquid’s case, it is pulling in roughly $600 million of annual revenue, and its token is worth more than Uniswap’s.
