A coordinated market manipulation operation on the decentralized exchange, Hyperliquid, allowed one or several traders to obtain a net profit of USD 2.78 million by operating the plasma token (XPL), as revealed on April 3 by the on-chain intelligence firm, Arkham.
Seven wallets deposited a total of USD 1.85 million in Hyperliquid through the platform’s Bridge2 bridge. Funds came in in tranches of between $390,000 and $890,000 in USDC, with some smaller transfers in ETH to cover network fees.
With that capital as collateral, accounts opened leveraged long positions on XPL to push token price higher.
The following graph shows how that manipulation became evident in the XPL quote:
Simultaneously They withdrew USD 4.63 million from their collateral balances. The difference between what was deposited and what was withdrawn (which was greater, due to the rise in the price of XPL) showed a profit of USD 2.78 million before accounting for the result of the positions themselves. That money, because trading is a zero sum gamecame from traders with open positions that were liquidated.
Once this operation was carried out, the operators did not close their positions in the market. Instead, they voluntarily let them go into liquidation. This means they allowed the Hyperliquid Liquidity Pool (HLP) – the liquidity pool that absorbs insolvent positions on the platform – to take care of the losses. The cost for Hyperliquid users contributing liquidity to the HLP was USD 600,000.
According to Arkham, the same operators replicated the operation on another asset within Hyperliquid. The target was Asterwhere they obtained an additional profit of USD 323,710.
As CriptoNoticias has reported, Hyperliquid is a trending exchange. The fact that it allows you to trade a large number of cryptocurrencies and raw materials in a decentralized way and without the need to provide personal identification is very attractive to many users. In addition, it has its own network —also called Hyperliquid—, whose native cryptocurrency is HYPE.