Hyperliquid's wild surge after listing! Why did the founder choose not to accept VC investment after entering the circle and learning programming by himself?

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The previous interview invited Jeff, the founder of Hyperliquid Labs. Hyperliquid is a Decentralization Perptual Futures Trading platform and also a Layer 1 project. In the one-hour conversation, Jeff shared his entrepreneurial experience, project vision, and observations on the Decentralized Finance industry. PANews has translated the interview content, involving technological innovations, operational models, user experience improvements, and also exploring the development trends and challenges of the Crypto Assets industry.

Entrepreneurial Journey

Host: Jeff, can you talk to us about how you embarked on the entrepreneurial path?

Jeff: This has to start from the beginning of 2020. At that time, I started to study some simple trading scripts, mainly focusing on centralized Crypto Assets exchange (CEX). Although there were already many large market makers entering the market at that time, sometimes 'ignorance is bliss' is a good thing. I just wanted to see if I could make some money.

The initial research results were very promising, so I decided to take this matter seriously. To be honest, I didn't know much about coding before, but in order to achieve my goals, I started to learn programming on my own. By 2022, we have become one of the largest traders on many trading platforms, and possibly one of the best in high-frequency market making.

Host: What prompted you to shift from successful quantitative trading to creating Hyperliquid?

Jeff: There are mainly two reasons:

First, we started to follow the Decentralized Finance industry and discovered many interesting protocol designs. An interesting phenomenon in Decentralized Finance is that many people who do not understand finance are trying to build financial systems, which in turn brings many opportunities to quantitative strategies.

Secondly, the collapse of FTX is an important turning point. This incident has made people realize that they should not blindly trust centralized exchanges. It is not an abstract theoretical discussion, but a real financial loss. For us, this is an important revelation - the world is finally ready to embrace true Decentralized Finance.

Product Concept

Host: Can you explain in layman's terms what Hyperliquid is all about?

Jeff: From the perspective of human history, society has always been evolving towards individualism. Every progress towards individualism, human rights, and so on, has been positive in its outcome, whether evaluated by GDP or happiness.

Hyperliquid continues to push in this direction: from the earliest need to protect their farms with weapons, to the later ability to keep money in banks, to the current Hyperliquid - you can fully control your funds through encryption technology.

Specifically, we are building a system that can:

Meet all the expectations of users for Web2 finance

Provide low cost

Support fast transfer

Realize instant settlement

Provide Liquidity comparable to Centralized Exchange

Allow integration with other applications without trust.

Support borrowing with Collateral

Allow users to truly use their funds freely

Financing strategy

Host: Why choose not to accept any investment? This is rare in the industry.

Jeff: This is indeed not a traditional business project. This may be the first time in Decentralized Finance or even the entire cryptocurrency industry to do so, but if you look at the example of Amazon, Bezos did not profit from it for a long time in the early days.

There are several deep reasons why we do this:

The cryptocurrency industry is too focused on short-term profits.

If you want to create a new financial method, having VCs hold 50% of the market share in the early stages will be a permanent stain.

Our team has the ability to not rely on external financing, which allows us to stick to this decision

Industry Perspective

Host: Do you have any criticisms of the current Crypto Assets industry?

Jeff: To be honest, currently the most "successful" products in the industry are often issuance fraudulent Tokens. Few projects truly follow a user-first model, because it is indeed very difficult to acquire real users. Most projects take shortcuts: first, they obtain investment from large market makers, and then attract trading through incentive programs. This model is not sustainable in the long run.

Host: How do you view the current status of the Cryptocurrency industry?

Jeff: Although many people see Cryptocurrency as a failed experiment, I believe this is the only hope for humanity to reinvent the financial system. Finance is one of the greatest inventions of humanity, it allows us to:

Representing value in a more abstract way

Achieve better capital allocation

Establish a complete economic system

Without these, all other advancements may not be possible. Human society may still be in the farming or even hunting and gathering stage.

Software should be able to fundamentally change finance, but the reality is that finance (and possibly healthcare) is one of the few large industries that has not experienced substantial innovation.

Technological innovation

Host: Could you elaborate on the concept of Builder Codes?

Jeff: This is a simple but powerful concept. It allows anyone to build financial applications on the basis of Hyperliquid, such as:

Innovative mobile Wallet

Social trading platform

Regional exchange

Fiat Currency deposit channel

Developers can:

Build your own exchange business

Use our neutral backend

Charge fees in a way that users trust

Earn revenue directly at the protocol level, rather than relying on private protocols with centralized exchanges.

This will open up a whole new way of building businesses in Decentralized Finance, making specialization possible. People who understand the specific needs of a particular region can focus on serving these users, while Hyperliquid provides support in the background.

Future Outlook

Host: How do you view the long-term development of the project?

Jeff: I like to use Go and Chess as metaphors. You don't need to be entirely sure where you're going in the end, but you must ensure that each step is in the right direction. It's important to take each step well, rather than being overly fixated on the distant destination. That's why we focus more on following the construction of infrastructure rather than short-term market performance.

Host: What is Hyperliquid's long-term vision?

Jeff: Our core philosophy is:

encryption貨幣將改變金融的運作方式

TradFi will eventually migrate to Cryptocurrency

Hyperliquid will become the foundational platform for carrying out these financial activities.

The specific implementation path is difficult to predict, but that is not the most important thing. We focus on building the infrastructure that will play an important role no matter how the future develops:

Builder Codes system

EVM integrated with native components on the chain

Sustainable high-quality Liquidity

These are all difficult to do well but essential infrastructure, I believe that no matter how Cryptocurrency develops in 10 years, they will be indispensable cornerstones.

[Disclaimer] The market is risky, and investment should be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, perspectives, or conclusions in this article are in line with their specific circumstances. Invest at your own risk.

This article is authorized to be reproduced from: "PANews"

Original author: Yuliya, PANews

『Hyperliquid exploded after going public! Why don't founders accept VC investment after they join the circle to learn the process on their own?' This article was first published in 'Encryption City'