Written by: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
On March 26, 2025, a trader "opened a massive $6 million short position on JellyJelly" and then "deliberately triggered self-liquidation by pushing up JellyJelly's price on-chain".
To address this trading crisis, Hyperliquid closed JELLY trading and forcibly settled positions at a lower price. Hyperliquid was once again pushed to the center of controversy, with continuous criticism from the industry. In fact, as early as March 12 this year, Hyperliquid had encountered a similar crisis - a whale deliberately liquidated an Ethereum long position worth about $200 million.
Hyperliquid Liquidation Event Review
According to Lookonchain monitoring, a whale holding 126 million JELLY (jellyjelly) manipulated the coin's price. The address first sold JELLY, causing a price crash, making HLP have a passive short position of 398 million JELLY (approximately $15.3 million). Then the address bought back JELLY, driving up the price, causing HLP to lose nearly $12 million. To minimize losses, HyperLiquid forcibly closed JELLY trading, settling it at $0.0095, instead of the $0.50 provided by decentralized exchanges' oracles.
HyperLiquid wrote on X: "After discovering evidence of suspicious market activities, the validator group convened a meeting and voted to remove the JELLY violators."
An industry insider summarized the event: Two accounts, one long and one short; continuously pulling up spot trading, causing liquidation; massive short positions taken over by Hype; all long positions are Hype's counterparties; then continuously pulling up to make long positions profitable, causing Hype huge losses; ultimately closing long positions for profit, then selling spot. It can be understood that everyone is hunting the casino together, with retail investors wanting to see the project die.
... [rest of the text continues in the same manner]On-chain detective ZachXBT posted on X platform criticizing Hyperliquid, saying: "It is infuriating that Hyperliquid officials can arbitrarily draw lines to manipulate prices, but when North Korean hackers use Radiant to steal funds and hold a certain size of short positions, they remain indifferent."
Arthur Hayes posted on social media that Hyperliquid cannot handle the JELLY incident, which is not decentralized at all, and not to think that traders really care about this. He dares to bet that HYPE will quickly fall back to its original point.