69 of the Most Influential: Jeff Yan — Architect of the New Era of Decentralized Finance

In 2025, the crypto space witnessed a transformation driven by one of the most understated yet most influential industry creators. Jeff Yan, founder of Hyperliquid, demonstrates how a defining role in shaping decentralized finance is achieved not through media hype, but through deep technical obsession and an uncompromising focus on the product. Yan’s position at 69 among the most influential figures of 2025 reflects the quiet but powerful impact that technical innovators have on the industry.

Yan rarely appears in the public sphere, almost never uses social media, and has never raised traditional venture capital. However, his Hyperliquid—a decentralized exchange for perpetual contracts—handles tens of billions of dollars monthly, changing the perception of what a true DeFi platform should look like.

When code became infrastructure: a success story prehistory

To understand Yan’s significance for the crypto industry, it’s essential to consider his background and career path. Growing up in Palo Alto in a family of Chinese immigrants, he exhibited exceptional talent in physics and mathematics. At the 2013 International Physics Olympiad, Yan won a gold medal, indicating his future role as a creator of complex systems.

His education in mathematics and computer science at Harvard provided a solid foundation, but it was his practical experience at Hudson River Trading, a leading high-frequency trading firm, that taught him to think in terms of latency and reliability. What architects of centralized platforms considered as unattainable characteristics, Yan saw as technical challenges to solve.

After a brief stint at Google, he launched Chameleon Trading, his own crypto trading firm, which operated during the bull market of 2020-2021. However, the true catalytic event was the collapse of FTX at the end of 2022. As centralized platforms crumbled, Yan realized that decentralized finance, where users hold their assets themselves, had the potential to surpass centralized alternatives if engineered correctly.

Hyperliquid: design without compromises

Launched in 2023 on a specialized layer-1 blockchain built from scratch for a single purpose, Hyperliquid introduced what previously seemed impossible: decentralized derivatives with features competing with centralized systems.

The platform achieved block finality in fractions of a second, provided an on-chain order book, and offered a user experience akin to Binance. Despite minimal marketing—only organic recommendations and liquidity competitions—Hyperliquid processed over $1 billion daily for several months. Today, this figure exceeds $10 billion per month, making the platform a dominant player in the crypto derivatives ecosystem.

What accelerated its growth was Yan’s simple yet revolutionary principle: “Create a product that users truly love and are willing to use.” This philosophy manifested in features like HIP-3, enabling permissionless market creation, and HyperEVM, expanding compatibility with Ethereum. Such innovations transformed Hyperliquid from a trading platform into a modular financial layer, on which the Felix protocol ecosystem and HyperLend could develop.

The most impressive aspect of this success story is what Hyperliquid did not do. No external funding—Yan fully financed the project from profits generated by Chameleon Trading. No splashy airdrop announcements, no allocations to venture capitalists. The platform grew through recommendations and results, not marketing campaigns.

When the HYPE token was finally launched at the end of 2024, its distribution was on Yan’s terms. About 31% of the volume went to early users; no venture fund had allocations. More than two-thirds of the reserves remained for ecosystem development, future airdrops, and long-term incentives for the team.

Within months, HYPE’s market cap reached approximately $20 billion in 2025. By early 2026, even after market adjustments, HYPE demonstrated resilience: the fully diluted market cap stands at $27.77 billion, with a current price of $28.86 and a circulating cap of $6.88 billion.

Yan’s model has sparked a wave of imitation in DeFi. It has become the new norm, as Hyperliquid directs hundreds of millions in protocol fees back to users through buybacks and token burns. This contrasts sharply with the traditional venture capital model, where investors receive disproportionate benefits.

Impact that doesn’t need advertising

Jeff Yan, ranked 69 among the most influential figures of 2025, remains a figure who does not seek attention. He rarely appears on podcasts, his social activity is minimal, and published interviews are rare. When he does speak—such as at TOKEN2049 in Singapore—his speeches stand out for their clarity and avoid sensationalism.

Nevertheless, the influence of his creation is felt throughout the industry. Hyperliquid forced competitors like dYdX to reconsider their infrastructure architecture and challenged the prevailing notion that large-scale building requires huge teams and significant capital. Even criticism directed at Hyperliquid’s liquidation system during the October 2025 market turmoil led to deep technical defenses of its design. Yan explained in detail how his models protect users by minimizing systemic risks rather than maximizing protocol revenue.

Hyperliquid’s roadmap remains open to change, with iterative updates taking precedence over planned major versions. However, expanding functionality, starting with HIP-3, demonstrates a desire to encompass a broader financial ecosystem on the blockchain.

Contrary to typical archetypes of industry founders, Yan remains an unassuming figure. In a market often dominated by loud statements and competitive arguments, his example illustrates the power of focused restraint. This approach echoes the principles of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who prioritizes building long-term solutions over chasing short-term trends.

Yan once said in an interview that “cryptocurrency will change how finance works. Traditional finance will eventually migrate to crypto. Hyperliquid will become the foundational platform for these operations.” For developers, he is a founder driven by productivity, coding more than tweeting. For users, he designed a system where outcomes determine value.

The 69th position among the most influential of 2025 is rightly attributed to Jeff Yan for how he, without media hype or venture capital, redefined what true decentralized financial infrastructure could look like. His quiet revolution is now entering a phase of expansion that could reshape the entire blockchain financial landscape.