WuBlockchain
Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan used a July 9 appearance on the VALR podcast to lay out a single operating principle for the team: build things that do not yet exist, and stop reaching for feature parity with rivals.
"I'm not interested in imitation, only in zero-to-one innovation," Yan said, arguing that chasing what ten other teams have already shipped is neither exciting nor the kind of work his engineers will pour themselves into. The frame matters because Hyperliquid's growth over the past year has come almost entirely from its on-chain perpetuals order book, a category that did not meaningfully exist in its current form when the team started.
He pointed to HIP-3, Hyperliquid's permissionless deployment framework, as the template for what comes next. The structure creates a four-way loop between protocols, deployers, interfaces, and the exchange itself, and Yan frames the coordination as the actual product, with new perps markets and primitives as downstream outputs. By that logic, metrics are a lagging indicator; the right metric is whether the team keeps finding the next zero-to-one to ship.
The read for the broader DeFi sector is that Hyperliquid is telegraphing it will keep defining its own surface area rather than competing head-on with centralized perps venues or the growing crop of copycat on-chain order books. If the playbook holds, each new HIP-3 primitive will widen the moat built by the original order book.
Source: [CeDeFi: VALR’s Integration of Hyperliquid | ft. Jeff Yan — YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FxR2AfQESI)
Frequently asked questions
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What did Jeff Yan say about Hyperliquid's product strategy?
In a July 9 VALR podcast interview, Yan said the team only wants to build things that don't yet exist. He dismissed feature parity with rivals as work his engineers would not commit to, and pointed to HIP-3 as the template for future zero-to-one bets.
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What is HIP-3 in Hyperliquid?
HIP-3 is Hyperliquid's permissionless deployment framework. Yan described it as a four-way loop between protocols, deployers, interfaces, and the exchange itself, with coordination as the product and new markets as a downstream output.
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Why does Yan reject feature parity with other DeFi projects?
Yan argued that copying something ten teams have already shipped is neither exciting nor the kind of work his engineers will commit to. He framed metric growth as a lagging indicator of building, not an input to it.
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How does this stance affect Hyperliquid's competitive position?
The implied stance is that Hyperliquid will keep defining its own category rather than compete head-on with centralized perps venues or copycat on-chain order books. Each new HIP-3 primitive is meant to widen the moat built by the original order book.
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When and where did Jeff Yan make these comments?
Yan spoke on the VALR podcast on July 9, 2026, in an episode titled "CeDeFi: VALR's Integration of Hyperliquid." The framing of HIP-3 and the zero-to-one philosophy came directly from that interview.
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