The Hyperliquid Basis has donated 10,000 HYPE tokens, that are price about $254,000, to blockchain investigator ZachXBT.
Based on ZachXBT, the donation is now the second-largest contribution he has acquired in institutional assist from blockchain platforms.
ZachXBT confirmed the donation by way of his Telegram channel on January 18, 2026, and in addition printed an up to date leaderboard of his high donors.
Hyperliquid comes second, trailing solely Optimism, however is forward of different main blockchain initiatives, together with Octant, The White Whale, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Unipcs, Nouns, CL207, and Excessive Stakes Capital, respectively.
Why did Hyperliquid donate cash to ZachXBT?
Some see the contribution as a symbolic gesture from a DeFi platform in direction of an investigator who has beforehand uncovered fraudulent exercise by itself community. Nevertheless, neither the Hyperliquid Basis nor ZachXBT have shared any particular motive for the donation.
ZachXBT is a pseudonymous blockchain investigator who can be an advisor at crypto funding agency, Paradigm.
ZachXBT, who has maintained anonymity, depends on neighborhood donations and grants to fund his work and in addition battle litigation.
His investigative strategies contain tracing cryptocurrency flows throughout blockchain networks, utilizing methods equivalent to handle clustering to uncover hidden connections between wallets and expose fraud patterns.
The investigator has helped monitor lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} throughout totally different cryptocurrency exploits, and his method has positioned him as one of many trade’s most distinguished fraud detectives.
Lately, he spotlighted an incident that occurred on January 10, the place a sufferer misplaced over $282 million price of LTC and BTC as a consequence of a {hardware} pockets social engineering rip-off, as Cryptopolitan reported.
Based on ZachXBT, “The attacker started changing the stolen LTC & BTC to Monero through a number of prompt exchanges, inflicting the XMR worth to sharply enhance. BTC was additionally bridged to Ethereum, Ripple, & Litecoin through Thorchain.”
The investigator additionally shared the theft handle.
Does ZachBXT have any ties to Hyperliquid?
The donation carries explicit significance given ZachXBT’s investigative works involving Hyperliquid’s platform.
In March 2025, ZachXBT uncovered an elaborate rip-off and the identification of the person on the heart of the scheme, which occurred to be a high-profile dealer on Hyperliquid’s decentralized alternate.
The particular person behind the rip-off was William Parker, a UK nationwide with a prison historical past involving fraud and on line casino theft. On the time, ZachXBT’s investigation revealed that Parker’s buying and selling pockets had acquired funds from victims of phishing scams and different probably illicit sources.
Parker had attracted consideration after producing round $20 million by way of extremely leveraged positions on Hyperliquid and GMX, together with suspiciously well-timed trades forward of main market bulletins.
Individually, ZachXBT flagged a $400,000 exploit involving stolen Hypurr NFTs from compromised wallets on the Hyperliquid community.
He has additionally flagged and tracked fraudulent transactions from dangerous actors which have occurred on Hyperliquid’s platform, though it’s price noting that his work just isn’t restricted to the platform.
