Hyperliquid Will Be “Used Forever,” Says Founder Jeff Yan
- Founder Jeff Yan casts Hyperliquid as lasting financial rails, not a short-cycle crypto play.
- Yan says the platform should stay useful for decades rather than become a remembered project.
- Built without venture backing, Hyperliquid has led decentralized perpetuals by open interest.
Jeff Yan, founder of the decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid, says his ambition is simple but unusual for the fast-moving crypto industry. Rather than building a project that gains temporary attention and fades, he wants the platform to become a permanent part of the financial system.
In his telling, success would not come from being memorialized later. It would come from still being used. He made that point in a recent appearance on the When Shift Happens channel, where he spoke about the platform in unusually blunt terms.
Yan said he did not want Hyperliquid to become a remembered brand from an earlier era of crypto. He wanted it to stay live, relevant, and functional, more like infrastructure than a product. “I don’t want it to be remembered for anything,” he said. “I just want it to be used forever.”
A Vision Focused on Long-Term Utility
That remark goes to the center of how Yan frames the project. He described the platform as part of a wider push to move financial activity onto blockchain rails and away from systems controlled by a single operator.
In that view, the real value lies in permanence and neutrality, not marketing or corporate visibility. Yan compared that model to Bitcoin, which continues to operate without any one company in charge. He also drew a parallel to the internet’s base-layer structure, where core infrastructure supports a wide range of activity above it.
He argued that finance could develop the same way, with open networks serving as the foundation and applications building on top. The implication is straightforward. If the system works as intended, people should not need to think much about who built it. They should simply use it.
What the Platform Actually Does
Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange paired with a Layer-1 blockchain built largely around perpetual futures trading. Its design combines an on-chain order book with trading infrastructure meant to deliver the kind of speed users usually expect from centralized venues.
That matters in derivatives markets, where execution quality can shape everything from pricing to risk management. The platform processes trades in fractions of a second and is built to handle large transaction volumes while keeping activity visible on-chain.
It emerged as traders were looking harder at non-custodial alternatives after a series of high-profile failures among centralized crypto firms. By early 2026, the exchange had grown into one of the dominant names in decentralized perpetuals.
It accounted for roughly 70% of decentralized perpetual derivatives’ open interest and carried billions of dollars in open positions, according to the figures cited around the project.
Separate Network, Separate Builder
Yan also used the interview to draw a sharper line between the protocol and the company associated with it. He said Hyperliquid Labs, the development team, should not be confused with the broader network itself.
That distinction is important to how the project presents its independence. The platform, in Yan’s view, should continue functioning regardless of any one builder or firm. That is a familiar argument in crypto, though not every project manages to make the separation convincing in practice.
Related: SEC and CFTC Weigh Move to Shared Washington Headquarters
Built Without Venture Capital Backing
Meanwhile, the project’s funding model remains one of its clearest points of differentiation. Hyperliquid was built without venture capital backing, a choice Yan has previously said was deliberate.
He argued that avoiding outside investment gave the team more room to focus on product utility and long-term alignment rather than valuation optics. That approach extends to the economics of the network.
Under the platform’s structure, fees are directed mainly toward liquidity providers and participants rather than the development team. For Yan, that is the standard that matters. Not whether the project is remembered later, but whether it is still there, still working, and still being used.
