How This 11-Person Crypto DEX Hyperliquid Generates Over $1 Billion Annually

While Wall Street firms need skyscrapers full of analysts to move money, an 11-person team just cracked the code—and they're eating traditional finance's lunch.

The Lean Machine Revolution

Hyperliquid's architecture strips away everything that bogs down legacy exchanges. No bloated corporate structure, no layers of compliance theater—just pure trading infrastructure that processes volumes rivaling institutional giants. Their secret weapon? Building everything from the ground up for speed rather than adapting outdated systems.

Volume Without the Bloat

The platform handles over $1 billion in annual trading with a team smaller than most restaurant kitchen crews. That efficiency would give any hedge fund COO nightmares—imagine firing 99% of your staff while increasing output. They've achieved what finance bros only dream about during their third espresso of the morning.

Decentralization's Dirty Little Secret

Turns out the most efficient market structure might not require thousands of employees or decades of legacy infrastructure. Sometimes all you need is brilliant code and the willingness to ignore 'how things have always been done.' The establishment's response? Probably forming a committee to study them—classic finance move.

How can 11-person Hyperliquid team pull it off?

How Hyperliquid manages to pull this off with just 11 employees may come down to its founder’s unconventional philosophy. Jeff Yan deliberately rejected venture capital, arguing that VCs often foster an illusion of progress by bloating valuations without delivering real utility. Instead, the team kept the protocol self-funded, focusing entirely on product and community.

That lean approach has allowed Hyperliquid to scale with extraordinary efficiency. Roughly half of the staff are engineers, shipping upgrades like HLP3 while processing $10 billion in daily trading volume. Yan says the priority is maintaining integrity and discipline within the small team, noting that “hiring the wrong person is much worse than not hiring anyone at all.”

Yan, a former co-founder of the centralized exchange Chameleon Trading, launched Hyperliquid Labs alongside Iliensinc, his Harvard classmate. The group has since attracted a small but elite roster of talent with backgrounds at Caltech, MIT, Citadel, and Hudson River Trading.