The founder of Hyperliquid once rejected a $1 billion valuation funding proposal, insisting on a "zero external investment" approach

According to market news, Hyperliquid founder Jeffrey Yan received an investment intention based on a valuation of about $1 billion and a scale of about $100 million less than a year after the project went live. However, after careful consideration, he ultimately chose to reject the investment terms.

Reports indicate that before and after the financing proposal was made, the team had been continuously using personal funds to maintain operations, consuming the founder's personal finances each month to cover project costs. During the investor's engagement, Jeff communicated with several entrepreneurs and VCs about the nature and significance of financing, but he was never convinced that external capital could enhance its intrinsic value. Ultimately, he clearly informed the team on Monday that he would reject the financing proposal.

Relevant insiders described that the team members managing funds were shocked by this decision, as several preparations had already been made around the financing. Jeff's core reason was that Hyperliquid is not a traditional company but an on-chain protocol that needs to maintain neutrality. He believed that once external equity capital was introduced, it could undermine the protocol's permissionless and neutral positioning, conflicting with its long-term design goals.

He had previously stated that if btc-42">Bitcoin had accepted VC financing in its early days, its neutrality narrative might have been weakened. Following the same logic, he chose to continue maintaining Hyperliquid's investor-free structure and to support part of the operating expenses with personal funds in the long term. On January 28, 2024, he summarized the project's principles on social media: · No investors · No paid market makers · No fees charged to the development team (or the development team does not take fees) · No insiders (or internal privileged participants). This statement is also seen as a core footnote to Hyperliquid's extreme decentralization/decapitalization approach.