Founder Jeff Yan Explains Why Hyperliquid Said ‘No’ to VCs and Still Won Big

Edyme

August 20, 2025

Rather than chasing exposure on Binance or Coinbase, Yan emphasized that the team has stayed “laser-focused” on building technology and...

Hyperliquid has quickly emerged as one of the most dominant forces in decentralized finance, controlling over 75% of the decentralized perpetual market share and holding nearly $6.2 billion in user assets.

With a token valuation of around $16 billion, the project now ranks 13th among all crypto assets, sparking comparisons to Binance in its early days.

In an exclusive interview with WuBlockchain, Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan shared how a small, self-funded team built what many call the next Binance, but fully onchain.

Self-Funding, no VCs, and staying decentralized

Unlike most crypto startups that raise massive venture rounds, Hyperliquid has rejected outside capital entirely. Yan explained that the project was self-funded from the start, driven by a philosophy that true progress comes from building products people actually use, not from inflated valuations.

“Ownership should be community-driven,” he said. “Real progress is users actually getting value, not investors cashing in early.”

This principle also explains Hyperliquid’s decision not to pursue centralized exchange listings for its token.

Rather than chasing exposure on Binance or Coinbase, Yan emphasized that the team has stayed “laser-focused” on building technology and community adoption. If exchanges list the token, that’s fine, but Hyperliquid won’t prioritize it over development, Yan noted.

Hyperliquid also resisted partnerships with private market makers, a common practice in crypto. Yan argued that avoiding such arrangements helps maintain decentralization and avoids conflicts of interest that have plagued centralized exchanges.

Small team, big vision

Despite its success, Hyperliquid’s core team remains just 11 people, split between engineering and non-engineering roles. Yan attributes the project’s efficiency to focus, careful hiring, and a refusal to dilute its culture with unnecessary expansion.

“Hiring the wrong person is much worse than not hiring anyone at all,” he explained.

Rather than building every product in-house, Yan sees Hyperliquid evolving into a decentralized protocol layer, allowing others to build stablecoins, tokenized assets, and applications on top.

His vision is for finance to operate on resilient, permissionless infrastructure, not through a single company with thousands of employees.

Looking ahead, Yan stressed that Hyperliquid avoids rigid roadmaps in favor of adaptability, citing ongoing work on HIP-3, spot and perpetual trading improvements, and scalability upgrades.

When asked if Hyperliquid could truly be the next Binance, Yan stayed cautious:

“A lot of this is hard work, community support, and luck. We always dreamed big, but no one could have predicted it would grow this much.”