Unchained Toxic Flow, Cancel Wars, and the Unstoppable Rise of Onchain Perps – The Chopping Block - Ep. 854
50 snips
Jun 20, 2025 
This week, Jeff Yan, CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid, joins the discussion. He’s at the forefront of DeFi's rapid evolution, with Hyperliquid claiming an astonishing 75% of onchain perp volume without any venture capital. They explore Jeff's minimalist strategy for bootstrapping a $1B airdrop and delving into the cancel wars that have crypto insiders buzzing. The conversation also covers the JellyJelly debacle with CZ, HIP-3's potential to revolutionize markets, and the implications of recent stablecoin regulations that sparked a surge in Circle’s stock.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Transparency Enables Flow Selection
- Hyperliquid's transparency allows market makers to develop reputation-based discrimination between toxic and good flow.
- This contrasts with centralized exchanges where user identities and positions are opaque.
JellyJelly Incident and Protocol Resilience
- The JellyJelly controversy exposed flaws in collateralization, not margin systems, leading to protocol improvements.
- Jeff Yan stresses that Hyperliquid's design ensures resilience even under adversarial circumstances.
Jeff Yan's Path to Hyperliquid
- Jeff Yan shares his journey from physics to trading, fascinated by markets as messy systems influenced by incentives.
- Trading led naturally to building Hyperliquid to improve the system itself after understanding its complexities.