Hyperliquid has reached the pinnacle of revenue per employee worldwide, at $106 million, outpacing conventional technology leaders and the former record holder, Tether Limited.
This revenue-per-employee statistic places Hyperliquid far ahead of established tech firms. Data compiled by Hyperliquid France indicates Tether in second place with $93 million per employee, while OnlyFans is third at $37.6 million.
The decentralized derivatives exchange operates with merely 11 core team members, as CEO and co-founder Jeff Yan confirmed in a recent discussion.
This lean workforce generates an annualized revenue of $1.167 billion, based on DefiLlama estimations as of Aug. 20. Traditional technology giants are significantly behind, with Nvidia at $3.6 million, Apple at $2.4 million, and Meta at $2.2 million per employee.
Hyperliquid’s revenue comes from trading fees accrued on its decentralized perpetual futures exchange.
The platform retains a portion of swap fees assigned to the treasury, token holders, and token buybacks, establishing a direct revenue flow from trading volumes without necessitating extensive operational costs.
The exchange’s automated market-making and derivatives trading framework functions with minimal human oversight, enabling the compact team to concentrate on protocol enhancement and development instead of daily operational tasks.
Rapid revenue growth
Since December, Hyperliquid has gathered $589.11 million in revenue, showcasing swift growth acceleration in recent months. The platform’s 30-day revenue achievements rank it as the third-largest revenue generator among crypto protocols, with $95.63 million added.
Consequently, Hyperliquid is only behind stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle, which earned $629.19 million and $203.91 million, respectively. This performance positions the derivatives platform ahead of other notable protocols, like Tron, Jupiter, and Pump.fun.
The comparison to traditional tech companies underscores the efficiency potential of decentralized finance protocols.
While Apple employs around 164,000 staff to generate $383 billion annually, Hyperliquid’s 11-person workforce realizes nearly $1.2 billion in revenue via automated trading systems.
The platform’s achievements illustrate how decentralized exchange protocols can attain massive scale with a streamlined team, challenging conventional notions regarding revenue production and operational demands in traditional finance.
