Hyperliquid Labs CEO Pitches Shared Blockchain Infrastructure for Finance

Hyperliquid Labs co-founder and CEO Jeff Yan says financial firms can use Hyperliquid to run markets while keeping their customer relationships, a model that leaves U.S. access questions unresolved.

In an interview published Oct. 15 at 5 a.m. ET (9 a.m. UTC), Yan said traditional financial businesses could build and operate markets on Hyperliquid while maintaining direct connections with customers. He called the network “a neutral layer on which finance can ultimately happen.” His pitch is for firms to use shared market infrastructure without handing their customer relationships to the protocol. The idea builds on earlier TokenPost coverage of public blockchains as exchange infrastructure.

Hyperliquid is a layer-one blockchain. HyperCore runs order books for spot trading and perpetual futures directly on the network. HIP-3 lets outside deployers create their own perpetual decentralized exchanges, or DEXs.

Launching one of those exchanges on mainnet requires a 500,000 HYPE stake from its deployer. The operator defines the markets and oracle, then handles tasks such as pricing, leverage limits and settlement. The stake applies to launching the venue, not to each asset listed on it.

A venue can list three assets without an auction. Further listings use a shared Dutch auction, with a 31-hour auction period. This separates the process for adding assets from the initial launch of each DEX.

Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures have no expiration date. Funding payments are designed to move their prices toward the underlying spot price over time, linking each contract to the market for its related asset without a fixed maturity date.

Yan’s regulatory view follows the framework’s division of responsibilities: he said rules should apply to deployers that control individual markets, while the protocol serves as infrastructure. He announced no agency-approved U.S. operating model or launch date.

The U.S. restriction described here applies to the Hyperliquid Foundation’s interface. Its terms exclude U.S. persons, and Yan said U.S. users should not use VPNs to bypass the restriction. Other interfaces may provide access to the network, but that does not establish whether U.S. users may legally trade derivatives through them.

As of Aug. 23, HIP-3 represented 48.0% of Hyperliquid’s trailing 30-day trading volume, with cumulative volume above $514 billion.