Hyperliquid’s HyperVault Project Rugged for $3.6M, Devs Disappear

HyperVault developers have executed a rug pull on their Hyperliquid-based DeFi platform, draining approximately $3.6 million in user funds before disappearing and deleting all social media ￰0￱ first detected abnormal withdrawals from the yield protocol, with funds being bridged from Hyperliquid to Ethereum and converted to ETH. #PeckShieldAlert #Rugpull ? We have detected an abnormal withdrawal of ~$3.6M worth of cryptos from@hypervaultfi. The funds were bridged from #Hyperliquid to #Ethereum , swapped into $ETH , and then 752 $ETH was deposited into #TornadoCash. pic.

twitter. com/mHQLPYXvzS — PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) September 26, 2025 Tornado Cash Conceals $3.6M Trail as Social Accounts Vanish The stolen funds followed a familiar pattern, with 752 ETH deposited into Tornado Cash to obscure transaction trails. HyperVault’s official Twitter account now displays “this account doesn’t exist,” while their Discord server has also vanished.) September 4, 2025 Code4rena’s website also showed no pending audits for HyperVault, contradicting the developers’ public statements about comprehensive security ￰1￱ these revelations, many users continued to deposit funds, attracted by the platform’s advertised 90% APR yields on HYPE ￰2￱ Maxis, such as HYPEconomist, actively promoted the protocol until the final days, posting “ cooking!

use the money and put it into a hypervault ” on September ￰3￱ is a shill for Hypervault that just rugged its ￰4￱ of scammers like this in the HL ￰5￱ — Rhadamant Memes (@rhadamant_nemes) September 26, 2025 The endorsement came just three days before the rug pull ￰6￱ that they’ve successfully executed the scam, the forensic aftermath has discovered early warning signs, including the project’s lack of transparency about team identities and the suspicious absence of any legitimate audit ￰7￱ high-yield promises should have also raised additional concerns given the DeFi market standards. HyperVault’s disappearance follows a pattern of DeFi projects using attractive returns to lure victims before executing exit ￰8￱ last month, CrediX Finance also executed a $4.5 million exit scam on August 8 after promising to recover stolen funds within two ￰9￱ protocol’s team vanished after attackers, suspected to be them, gained administrative control of their multisig wallet, with all official accounts deleted and the website remaining offline since the exploit ￰10￱ Faces Growing Security and Competition Challenges The HyperVault rug pull compounds existing pressure on Hyperliquid as ASTER DEX gained significant ground in perpetual trading volume.

ASTER’s Trust Wallet integration provides 100 million users with direct access to perpetual contracts, challenging Hyperliquid’s market ￰11￱ exploits have tested Hyperliquid’s infrastructure, including the March JELLY token manipulation that cost the platform’s vault $13.5 million. A trader used leveraged positions and artificial price pumping to exploit the automated market maker ￰12￱ incidents involved traders earning profits while causing vault losses, including “ETH 50x Big Guy,” who netted $1.8 million profit while the vault lost $4 ￰13￱ exploits led to reduced maximum leverage limits from 40x to 25x for major ￰14￱ issues have also plagued the platform, including a 37-minute trading outage in July due to an API server overload caused by a surge in ￰15￱ downtime caused price divergences as traders were unable to close positions during the ￰16￱ now, it is uncertain how HYPE’s price will react to this; however, with Arthur Hayes now polling followers about re-entering HYPE after the token dropped 23% weekly to $35.50.

Should I get back on the $HYPE train fam? ￰17￱ — Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) September 26, 2025 He has restored optimism after being one of the factors that contributed to its downtrend when he sold all his position, citing massive upcoming token unlocks that could create $500 million monthly sell pressure.