The world's most "profitable" company changes hands: a crypto team of 11 people generates an average revenue of 100 million dollars per person.

Author: Zen, PANews

The world's most profitable company per capita has changed hands, but it is still a crypto project. Recently, HyperliquidFR claimed that the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid generates an average annual revenue of $102.4 million per employee, surpassing Tether, OnlyFans, Nvidia, and Apple, ranking first in global per capita revenue among companies. Before this, the stablecoin issuer Tether held the top position with over $90 million in per capita revenue. According to DefiLlama data, the Hyperliquid team has only 11 core members, with an estimated annual revenue of about $1.127 billion.

In the cryptocurrency industry filled with myths of getting rich quickly, it is not uncommon for project teams to make a fortune, and for young founders to transform into crypto millionaires. However, cases like Jeff Yan and his creation of Hyperliquid, which can achieve such scale and efficiency with a small team, are still rare. By looking back into Jeff's family upbringing, educational background, and career experiences, it becomes apparent that the emergence of Hyperliquid and its development path may not be coincidental.

####From a top "exam taker" to the founder of a decentralized exchange

Jeff Yan was born and raised in Palo Alto, California, USA, to Chinese immigrant parents. As a teenager, Jeff began to show a strong aptitude for mathematics and physics. In 2012, he achieved a silver medal at the 43rd International Physics Olympiad (IPhO), despite having only focused on physics research for about a year. In 2013, Jeff participated again in the 44th International Physics Olympiad and ultimately won a gold medal, ranking 24th, making him the first graduate from his high school, Palo Alto High School, to achieve such an outstanding result in this top-level competition.

As a top "exam taker", Jeff successfully enrolled in Harvard University, majoring in Mathematics and Computer Science. After graduation, Jeff joined the high-frequency trading giant Hudson River Trading (HRT) as a quantitative trader. At HRT, he conducted in-depth research on the US stock market, designed low-latency systems capable of executing thousands of trades per second, and gained a deep understanding of how market makers provide liquidity and the impact of different trading flows on market efficiency.

In 2018, Jeff was attracted by the burgeoning cryptocurrency industry. He attempted to build a Layer 2 prediction market platform on Ethereum, but it ended in failure due to regulatory uncertainty, limited application, and a lack of users. After gaining experience, he refocused his attention on trading, and combined with his work experience, he founded the cryptocurrency market-making company Chameleon Trading in early 2020. During the bull market, Chameleon Trading quickly grew to become one of the largest market makers among centralized exchanges.

Until November 2022, the collapse of FTX Exchange shocked the world. "People realized that cryptocurrency was originally a fun game until some bad things happened," Jeff recalled. After witnessing billions of dollars evaporate overnight due to users' trust in centralized platforms, many saw it as a signal to "abandon the pit" and began to distance themselves from cryptocurrency, leading the industry into a prolonged slump. However, Jeff saw challenges and opportunities.

Jeff realized that ordinary users would place greater importance on self-custody and tend to trade crypto assets in a decentralized manner. At the same time, they found that the market lacked a trading platform that balances the principles of decentralization with a high user experience. Based on this judgment, the core concept of Hyperliquid was born: to create a "fully on-chain" high-performance perpetual contract exchange, allowing users to enjoy a trading experience close to that of centralized exchanges while retaining control over their assets—Hyperliquid can theoretically process 200,000 transactions per second, and the platform supports multiple markets and high leverage.

####Self-Funding and Streamlining: Jeff Yan's Small Team Strategy

In traditional startup stories, founding teams usually begin to seek funding and resource support from venture capital firms after showcasing their unicorn potential, and they start to rapidly expand their team size. This script is rarely an exception, even in the Web3 and cryptocurrency industry, which is known for its decentralization. However, Jeff and Hyperliquid are that exception.

Jeff emphasized that the development of Hyperliquid was entirely self-funded and that he has never accepted venture capital. He stated that he is not starting a business for wealth, as in his view, "money is just a number"; what is more important is to create valuable and meaningful products. Jeff believes that instead of continuously seeking venture capital for milestone publicity, it is true progress to let users experience actual value.

Thus, Hyperliquid has upheld the principle of "community-led ownership" since its inception: directly allocating tokens to users through user transactions, never allowing venture capitalists to control the network. As Jeff said, "Having venture capitalists hold a large stake in a decentralized network will become a 'scar on the network'"; his vision is to establish a financial system that is "built by users and belongs to users."

In terms of team building, Hyperliquid has always maintained a "small but exquisite" strategy, currently with a core team of only 11 members, about half of whom are engineers, while the remaining members are responsible for product and operations. The team maintains a flat and efficient working atmosphere, with Jeff granting the team ample autonomy in management, while actively participating in technical aspects and staying informed about all developments. Hyperliquid adheres to a light asset operation model, without a separate marketing department or traditional business development team.

In the early stages of entrepreneurship, Jeff and other members went through various difficulties during the project's inception, collaborating seamlessly with each other. This is attributed to Jeff's unwavering principle of "striving for excellence" in talent recruitment. He admits to being very selective about every partner he hires because "hiring the wrong person can be worse than not hiring anyone at all." Although he is willing to appropriately expand the team as the business grows, he insists on only bringing in those who are "extremely intelligent, ambitious, and truly passionate about this career."

Jeff stated in an interview: "We are not like those typical teams in the cryptocurrency space that have grand long-term visions, raise a lot of money, and create multi-year roadmaps. I think that approach is cool, but it’s not our strength." Jeff claimed that the team focuses more on the actions they need to take next and believes they are moving in the right direction, but they will not create a plan that includes hundreds of steps.

####Hyperliquid How did it rise?

Hyperliquid's technical architecture is completely different from traditional DEXs. It is a fully on-chain matching decentralized perpetual contract exchange, unlike the AMM model of Uniswap. The Hyperliquid team has specially built a high-performance Layer-1 blockchain (also named "Hyperliquid"), giving it trading throughput close to CEX levels. On this foundation, Hyperliquid has achieved a complete order book matching—limit orders, transactions, cancellations, and settlements all occur transparently on-chain and can be completed within a single block. Some analyses suggest that by June 2025, Hyperliquid will have captured approximately 78% of the on-chain derivatives market, with daily trading volume exceeding $5.5 billion.

Hyperliquid's matching engine also introduces special rules: the platform intentionally lowers the priority of high-frequency "taker" market orders, giving market makers the opportunity to update their quotes. This encourages market makers to offer tighter bid-ask spreads, providing better pricing for traders. Under this price-time priority and strategically smooth matching mechanism, all trades are executed on-chain, and the entire process is completely transparent to users. Such complex matching rules and decentralized execution are favored by professional traders.

Regarding liquidity, Hyperliquid has established a protocol-level HLP: a hybrid liquidity pool combining market making and clearing functions. The HLP treasury is owned by the protocol, and any user can deposit funds to participate in market making. When there are no matches in the order book, the HLP will act as the counterparty to complete the transaction. Jeff emphasized that, apart from the HLP, Hyperliquid has not entered into any private agreements or funding arrangements with any market-making institutions. In other words, Hyperliquid does not designate internal liquidity pools or market makers like some centralized exchanges; the only source of liquidity comes from the open HLP, which is designed to ensure fairness and transparency.

In addition, Hyperliquid's decentralized design is also reflected in its token economics. The native token HYPE serves as a governance tool for the network and can lower transaction fees through staking, while also having a buyback mechanism to capture value. When the HYPE token was launched in November 2024, Hyperliquid airdropped 31% of the tokens to approximately 94,000 users, making it one of the largest user-centric distributions in recent years.

Since its launch, Hyperliquid has experienced explosive growth. With its fully on-chain transparency characteristics, Hyperliquid has successfully attracted a large number of crypto whales and top institutions to participate. All its trading, position, and margin data are publicly accessible, and this unprecedented transparency has not only established a strong foundation of trust but has also become its most striking calling card. The frequent entries and exits of well-known trading institutions and capital giants have not only brought immense liquidity but have also invisibly provided "credit endorsement" for the platform, allowing it to rise rapidly in the derivatives sector.

When it launched in 2023, without overwhelming marketing or KOL promotion, the platform's daily trading volume surpassed 1 billion USD in less than 100 days. A DWF research article states that Hyperliquid's crypto perpetual contract trading volume in July 2025 is approximately 320 billion USD, with protocol revenue reaching 86.6 million USD, both breaking historical records. On August 15, Hyperliquid announced on platform X that it set a new milestone, with a 24-hour trading volume reaching 29 billion USD and fees totaling 7.7 million USD.

According to a new report on Hyperliquid released by data provider RedStone, Hyperliquid has captured over 80% of the decentralized perpetual contract market in just one year, comparable to some of the largest centralized exchanges. These astonishing figures have earned Hyperliquid the title of "on-chain Binance" from the community. All of this has been achieved with a team of only a dozen people and a zero marketing budget.