Binance founder and former chief executive officer, Changpeng Zhao has debunked rumors about an investment in Hyperliquid. In a post on his official X page on Friday, Zhao said Binance Labs doesn’t hold any equity in the project despite links with Jeff Yan.
CZ made the disclosure in response to emerging information that YZiLabs (Formerly Binance Labs) alongside the Binance founder is backing Jeff Yan and Hyperliquid. Supporting the claim, one user on X shared a screenshot of a post from YZiLabs’ page announcing the launch of its program for young developers.
As per the post, Jeff Yan, a popular American computer scientist who founded Hyperliquid participated in the program. To an extent, the revelation indicated a possible connection between the parties, forcing CZ to react and dispel any building misconception.
In response, CZ admitted knowing Jeff Yan through the YZiLabs incubation season 1 cohort in 2018. However, the project according to the former Binance CEO didn’t materialize, while he didn’t keep further contact with Jeff.
Also, he revealed that early this year the Hyperliquid founder attempted to reach out but wrong scheduling prevented the conversation. He emphasized that during the whole run, YZiLabs didn’t receive HL tokens despite rumors claiming otherwise.
Side notes on Hyperliquid
The rumors surfaced amidst the criticism Hyperliquid has been enduring in recent times. Recently, there were complaints over the increasing centralized posture and the increasing number of rug pulls on the network.
Late last month, HyperVault, one of the leading projects on Hyperliquid, allegedly rug-pulled $3.6 million worth of users’ funds. Despite the downsides, the platform has remained relevant by constantly updating its offerings with innovative solutions.
Early this year, Hyperliquid took a bold move towards ecosystem expansion with the launch of its multi-purpose Ethereum Virtual Machine, HyperEVM. According to a Binbits report, the project is aimed at attracting more developers and innovations to the Hyperliquid network.
It is worth mentioning that Jeff Yan launched Hyperliquid in 2023 and it has already become one of the biggest decentralized exchanges. Additionally, the decentralized exchange is based on Hyperliquid’s layer-1 blockchain network.
He conceived the idea of building a DEX in 2022 when he became committed to cryptocurrency trading using Chameleon Trading. While using the platform, Jeff identified some shortcomings of centralized exchanges and the collapse of FTX in 2022 gave him the full conviction to build a reliable alternative.
According to Datawallet, the DEX handles more than $10 billion in daily trading volume.