Jeff Yan rarely speaks in public, avoids social media and has never taken venture capital money. But in 2025, few individuals have had a greater influence on the shape of decentralized finance (DeFi) and the crypto space itself.
This feature is part of CoinDesk 2025 Most Influential List.
Yan is the founder of Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange (DEX) for perpetual futures that processes approximately $10 billion in transactions per day, with DefiLlama posting volume of $308 billion in October. With over 570,000 users and a bespoke blockchain that matches the speed and reliability of centralized platforms, Hyperliquid has quietly become a dominant player in crypto derivatives.
He did it without hype, investor support, or a large team: just 11 core contributors, a vision rooted in technical precision, and a constant focus on product led by Yan.
To understand Yan’s rise, it helps to know where he came from. Raised in Palo Alto, California, by Chinese immigrant parents, Yan was a physics prodigy, winning gold at the 2013 International Physics Olympiad.
He studied mathematics and computer science at Harvard, then joined Hudson River Trading (HRT), a high-frequency trading firm known for its ultra-low latency strategies. After a short stint at Google, he left to start his own crypto trading company, Chameleon Trading, during the 2020-2021 bull run.
Even then, Yan stayed out of the spotlight. Its robots managed the markets; he took care of the infrastructure. But the collapse of FTX at the end of 2022 changed the situation. As traders fled the ruins of centralized exchanges, Yan saw openness as the preferred alternative, decentralized finance where users held their own funds, did not compete with centralized alternatives. So he set about building something better.
From code to basic infrastructure
In 2023, Yan launched Hyperliquid on a custom layer 1 blockchain, built from the ground up with one goal: fast, decentralized derivatives. The first version felt like a developer sandbox just showing off raw performance, with no financial incentives to attract users. But it worked. Hyperliquide offered sub-second finality, on-chain order books, and a Binance-like user experience.
Within a few months, it was processing more than a billion dollars per day. It now brings in well over $10 billion a month.
The secret of the platform’s success? In Yan’s words: “Our philosophy is simple: create a product that users truly love and are ready to use. »
New features like permissionless market-making (HIP-3) and Ethereum compatibility (via HyperEVM) have transformed Hyperliquid into a modular financial layer, not just a trading platform. Since then, protocols like Felix and HyperLend have relied on it, attracted by its speed and shared incentives.
What makes this more remarkable is what Hyperliquid doesn’t TO DO. She never raised any outside capital, as Yan started the entire project using profits from Chameleon Trading. There were no flashy airdrop announcements, no venture capital allocations, and no influence campaigns. The platform grew through word of mouth, organic liquidity competitions and performance.
When Hyperliquid finally launched its token, HYPE, in late 2024, it did so on its own terms. About 31% of the supply went to early adopters, and no venture capital funds received an allocation. The remaining supply, more than two-thirds, was reserved for future ecosystem growth, airdrops, or long-term team incentives. By mid-2025, HYPE had reached a market capitalization of nearly $20 billion, although crypto withdrawal has since driven that figure down.
The model has sparked copycats in DeFi. This has become a new normal, as Hyperliquid has returned hundreds of millions in protocol fees to users through buybacks and burns. HYPE even has its own digital asset treasury company, Hyperliquid Strategies, which has decided to raise up to $1 billion to accumulate the token.
The silent disruption
Yan is an unlikely figure in the DeFi boom of 2025. He doesn’t attract attention: he rarely appears on podcasts, isn’t extremely outspoken on social media, and his published interviews are rare. When he speaks, like at TOKEN2049 in Singapore, he speaks clearly and avoids hype.
But its influence is tangible. Hyperliquid has forced competitors like dYdX to accelerate their infrastructure and challenged the idea that big teams and big capital are needed to build at scale.
Even controversies, such as criticism of Hyperliquide’s liquidation system during the October 10 crash, have led to thoughtful technical defenses. Yan argued that his models protect users by minimizing systemic risk, not by maximizing protocol revenue.
For the future, the roadmap remains vague. Iterative upgrades seem to be preferred over milestone-driven hype cycles. But if HIP-3 is any indication, Hyperliquide is expanding beyond its roots and seeking to host the entire financial system, on-chain.
Despite all this, Yan seems unfazed. He still doesn’t talk much. But in a market that is often noisy and erratic, his quiet focus has proven magnetic. The attitude is comparable to that of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who prefers to focus on building long-term solutions rather than following short-term trends.
“Our fundamental philosophy is: cryptocurrency will change the way finance works. Traditional finance will eventually migrate to cryptocurrency. Hyperliquid will become the core platform for these financial activities,” Yan said in an interview last year.
For builders, he has become the performance-obsessed founder who codes more than he tweets. For users, he created a system in which results determine value.
