Oct 22, 2025 · 30m · tbpn
Building a $10B+ DeFi Protocol with Just 11 People | Jeff Yan Joins TBPN
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this in-depth interview, Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan explains how an 11-person engineering team built a multi-billion-dollar decentralized Layer-1 financial protocol by prioritizing credible neutrality, first-principles systems design, and high talent density.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 29.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 3.3 Guest teaching 2.9 Guest disagreement 1.0 The hosts pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 6:08 Genesis neutrality vs secondary VC buying
Yan rejects the premise that open-market VC purchases negate protocol neutrality, insisting the absence of early insider allocations is an inviolable founding principle.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 5:26 Coogan challenges the no-VC purity stanceCoogan presses Yan on whether the anti-VC narrative is purely aesthetic, arguing deep-pocketed funds can replicate insider stakes on the open market regardless.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 16:05 Yan reframes scaling from hardware to economic stakeYan corrects the host's assumption regarding ASIC mining and data centers, explaining the mechanics of Proof of Stake consensus and economic validator security.
The host holds their own ▶ 12:44 Coogan details traditional commodity settlement quirksCoogan demonstrates solid financial literacy by contextualizing derivatives trading through CBOT agricultural physical deliveries and negative crude oil settlement anomalies.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophical Opening: Striving for Satoshi's Ideals | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Coogan sets up a friendly, accessible entry point for a tech audience that is not crypto-native. Jeff Yan provides a smooth overview of Hyperliquid's origins following the FTX collapse without any friction. | |
| Protocol Custodianship Versus Corporate Web2 Models | 5 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Coogan challenges the no-VC lore by asking what prevents tier-one venture funds from simply amassing a 20 percent position on the secondary market. Yan distinguishes between cap-table insiders at genesis versus open-market participants to defend credible protocol neutrality. | |
| Product Strategy and Inspiration from Amazon AWS | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | The hosts inquire about iteration and Web2 corporate influences. Yan draws an analogy to Amazon creating AWS from internal infrastructure to explain Hyperliquid's evolution into a general liquidity layer. | |
| Trader Intuition Versus Data-Driven Engineering | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Coogan shows domain knowledge regarding Chicago Board of Trade commodity futures settlements and negative oil pricing. Yan educates listeners on how perpetual contracts synthesize futures and options advantages without expiration dates. | |
| Proof of Stake and Economic Security Mechanics | 3 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Coogan asks if scaling the protocol requires custom ASIC hardware like Bitcoin mining. Yan gently corrects this premise by explaining that Hyperliquid relies on Proof of Stake, where security is an economic rather than computational problem. | |
| Decentralized Brand Building and Community Ecosystem | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | Hays highlights Hyperliquid's organic brand power and lack of traditional PR agencies. Yan elaborates on maintaining an 11-person team while delegating application building and viral distribution to the decentralized community. | |
| Ambitions for Modernizing Global Financial Rails | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Hays conducts a rapid-fire lightning round covering HIP-3, U.S. market regulation, and centralized exchange competition. Yan clarifies common misconceptions, emphasizing that Hyperliquid is a dedicated L1 blockchain rather than merely an app-level exchange. | |
| Relocating to Singapore and Lifestyle Perspectives | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | The conversation shifts to Singapore lifestyle, cultural lock-in, and strict engineering hiring standards. The hosts validate Yan's focus on intense talent density and extreme operational efficiency. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Yan: Hyperliquid Is Primary On-Chain Price Discovery Venue
“Hyperliquid is the primary on-chain venue for price discovery.”
Yan: Hyperliquid Generates Over $1B in Annual Revenue
“It does more than a billion dollars in revenue a year.”
Jeff Yan: Hyperliquid will ultimately become the rails for all finance
“And so we hyper liquid really is what we think like credibly neutral protocol, which will ultimately be the rails that kind of all the finance kind of upgrades their tech stack.”
Jeff Yan: Bitcoin would not be Bitcoin if Satoshi raised a Series A
“Bitcoin would not be Bitcoin if he had raised Series A, even if best investors in the world, you know, sickest cap table ever, still, still would, I would say that would not, Bitcoin would not be Bitcoin.”
Yan: Day-one VC insiders permanently scar a protocol's credible neutrality
“If there are insiders from day one, it doesn't matter how much dispersion of supply, mindshare, talent, et cetera. There is the sort of like the big bang moment will always be there and will always sort of like a scar on the record of the thing.”
Yan: Perpetuals trading generated over 50% of all crypto revenue
“And purpose trading was the obvious one I think it was probably doing. More than 50% of the revenue in all of crypto back then, sort of back of the envelope calculations.”
Yan: Automated trading requires approximations due to noise, unlike AI learning
“I think there's a lot of, it feels a bit like doing physics kind of. It's like you do a lot of approximations. You don't, you can't get anything exactly right because markets are basically a, there's a lot of randomness, right? There's more noise than there is…”
Yan: Hyperliquid is built on intuition and never does A/B testing
“It feels like we are, we actually like not very data driven at all. It's basically all intuition. It's just like, we just think really hard about how the world should be. And we just try to do the best thing that will obviously like adapt to data. Like if some…”
Yan: Retail options traders get fleeced due to complex pricing dynamics
“It's actually really hard to price an option, especially if you're retail and especially if you're using like an app that doesn't give you the information that you need. And so you're kind of getting fleeced because there was like very complicated structures.”
Yan: Bitcoin perpetual futures drive price discovery over spot assets
“Like you look at Bitcoin, for example, on any one exchange, there's like usually one very liquid Bitcoin perp and that's the liquid asset forever, never expires. And like, that's where the price discovery happens. Like billions and billions of dollars will tra…”
Jeff Yan: Hyperliquid operates with 11 people and zero marketing staff
“We're only 11 people and we don't have it. We don't have, we have no one working on marketing.”
Jeff Yan: Main financial pillars on Hyperliquid are built by community
“The sort of like pillars of finance on hyperliquid are, By and large, built by community members.”
Jeff Yan: Hyperliquid Plans to Launch U.S. Equities Perpetuals By 2026
“There are already some perps on, so there are gold perps tokenized gold and there, I think the answer to when is probably in the next year, because HIP three I think is unlocking a lot of this. So basically letting, it lets anyone kind of come and deploy their…”
Yan: Hyperliquid Runs on 24 Top Stake Validators
“It's really not. It's a blockchain. The validator sets permissionless. They're currently 24 validators. You know, anyone can spin one up. It's like top, top 24 by stake. The validator set, you know, every validator executes every transaction, including all the…”