Decentralized exchange Hyperliquid on March 26 again experienced a trader's active liquidation of $JELLYJELLY, causing its vault to temporarily suffer over $10 million in unrealized losses. However, to avoid losses, the official chose to delist the $JELLYJELLY trading pair and settle positions at a favorable price, stopping the risk of a death spiral.
Notably, Hyperliquid, positioned as a DEX, has fallen into a public opinion whirlpool due to this centralized operation, even drawing severe criticism from industry celebrities like BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes and Bitget CEO Gracy Chen.
Hyperliquid Launches Fully On-Chain Validator Voting Function
Perhaps under public opinion pressure, Hyperliquid posted on social platform X earlier today, stating that it has launched a fully on-chain validator voting function for asset delisting:
The Hyperliquid blockchain has been upgraded and now has a fully on-chain validator voting function for asset delisting. When the required number of staked votes support delisting, the action will be automatically triggered on-chain. This permissionless, stake-based voting weight mechanism is built into HyperCore and technically does not require off-chain coordination.
As a demonstration of this mechanism, Hyper Foundation validators 2-5 will vote to delist the MYRO perpetual contract around 13:00 UTC on March 29. Hyper Foundation validator 1 will abstain from voting until the initial delegated plan participants complete their delegation.
As with other chains, most validators may explicitly express their voting intentions off-chain in advance to provide clarity and predictability for users. Hyper Foundation does not act or speak on behalf of other validators. Interfaces may be developed or provided in the future to summarize validator voting in a more user-friendly manner.
Community Doubts: Can It Really Break Free from Centralization?
While some community members said the platform "acknowledging and correcting mistakes is commendable", others questioned whether this truly frees Hyperliquid from centralization. X user Cedric Beau commented:
Validators voting on-chain is a big step forward, but if most voting is still coordinated off-chain and led by foundation validators, we haven't escaped centralization.
We're just wrapping it in new code.
True decentralization means genuine stake distribution, truly independent voting, and real accountability. Anything below this standard is just governance theater with a smooth user interface.
HYPE Drops Below $13
According to CoinGecko data, Hyperliquid's platform token HYPE has continued to decline since this incident, currently at $12.8, with a 24-hour drop of 6.2% and a weekly drop of over 20%.
This time, Hyperliquid has shown an attempt to repair the gap between itself and investors, but the future effects and whether similar anti-decentralization operations will occur remain to be seen.
