On November 29, 2025, Hyperliquid celebrated the first anniversary of its Token Generation Event. In just 365 days, a team of eleven people built what is now arguably the most profitable and efficient trading venue in the history of finance, crypto or otherwise. No venture capital, no pre-mine, no marketing budget, just code, transparency, and an almost religious focus on aligning incentives with users. What they achieved in one year feels like fiction.
From Zero to $9.5 Billion Airdrop – The Largest in Crypto History
When Hyperliquid launched its HYPE token in late November 2024, it airdropped 31% of the total supply to early users and points earners. One year later, that airdrop is worth approximately $9.5 billion at current prices, surpassing every previous community distribution (Jito, Celestia, Uniswap, and even early Bitcoin miners) combined. Unlike most airdrops that are immediately dumped, HYPE’s tokenomics were engineered to reward long-term holders and the protocol itself:
- •97% of all trading revenue is used to buy back and burn (or redistribute) HYPE.
- •Team tokens vested linearly with zero sales observed during the first major unlock of 1.75 million tokens.
- •No investor tokens, no preferential allocations.
The result? A flywheel that turned early adopters into multi-millionaires while keeping downward sell pressure almost nonexistent.
$1.3 Billion Annualized Revenue with an 11-Person Team
According to DeFiLlama and Token Terminal data, Hyperliquid is currently generating between $1 billion and $1.3 billion in annualized protocol revenue, almost entirely from perpetual futures trading fees. That works out to roughly $106–118 million in revenue per employee, shattering every known record in both crypto and traditional finance. For context:
- •Jane Street (2023): ~$7–8 million revenue per employee
- •Citadel Securities: ~$10–12 million
- •Binance (peak 2021): ~$25–30 million
Hyperliquid is running at 4–10× the per-employee efficiency of the most elite proprietary trading firms on Earth, while remaining fully on-chain and non-custodial.
Built in Public, Attacked in Public, Survived in Public
Few projects have faced as much high-profile skepticism as Hyperliquid. In early 2025, Binance CEO Richard Teng (CZ’s successor) publicly questioned the sustainability of Hyperliquid’s model and hinted at “unsustainable economics.” The market briefly dipped, then proceeded to 10× from those levels as volume and revenue continued climbing. Other milestones that silenced critics:
- •Processed over $330 billion in cumulative trading volume.
- •Launched HIP-3, the first fully on-chain equities perpetuals (Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, etc.) with permissionless listing.
- •Never had a liquidation engine failure or insurance fund drawdown, even during extreme volatility events.
- •Remained completely unaudited yet gained trust through radical transparency (every trade, every fee, every buyback verifiable on-chain in real time).
Why This Feels Different From Another Planet
Most crypto projects spend their first year begging for liquidity, paying influencers, and praying for listings. Hyperliquid spent it shipping:
- •HyperEVM (an EVM-compatible chain optimized for trading)
- •Native USDC bridging with Circle
- •A spot engine, perps engine, and now equities, all in one order book
- •Zero downtime, zero exploits, zero drama
They didn’t just build another DEX. They built a venue that institutions now quietly route billions through because spreads are tighter and execution is more reliable than many centralized alternatives.
What Year Two Might Look Like
With $1–1.3 billion in cash flow, a war chest of bought-back HYPE, and a team that has shown monk-like discipline, speculation is already turning to 2026:
- •Potential expansion into on-chain options and prediction markets
- •RWA tokenization and 24/7 equities trading
- •Possible Hyperliquid L1 scaling solutions
- •Further revenue-sharing or staking mechanisms
Whatever comes next, one thing is clear: in an industry littered with fallen giants (FTX, Celsius, Terra, etc.), Hyperliquid has done something rare, earned trust the hard way, one block at a time. Eleven people. One year. Ten-digit revenue. The quietest revolution in crypto just turned one, and it’s only getting started.