Hyperliquid Foundation donated 10,000 HYPE tokens. it is value About $254,000 to blockchain investigator ZachXBT.
According to ZachXBT, this donation is now his second largest institutional support donation from a blockchain platform.
ZachXBT confirmed the donation through his Telegram channel on January 18, 2026, and also published an updated leaderboard of top donors.
Hyperliquid ranks second, behind Optimism, but ahead of other major blockchain projects such as Octant, The White Whale, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Unipcs, Nouns, CL207, and High Stakes Capital, respectively.
Why did Hyperliquid donate to ZachXBT?
Some see this donation as a symbolic gesture from the DeFi platform to investigators who previously exposed fraud on its network. However, neither the Hyperliquid Foundation nor ZachXBT have disclosed the specific reason for the donation.
ZachXBT is a pseudonymous blockchain researcher and advisor to the cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm.
ZachXBT maintains anonymity, relies on community donations and grants to fund his work, and also works on lawsuits.
His investigative methods include using techniques such as address clustering to track the flow of cryptocurrencies across blockchain networks, uncovering hidden connections between wallets and uncovering patterns of fraud.
This investigator has helped track down hundreds of millions of dollars across a variety of cryptocurrency exploits, and his approach has established him as one of the most prominent fraud detectives in the industry.
Recently, he put the spotlight on an incident that occurred on January 10th. In this case, victims lost more than $282 million worth of property. LTC and BTC As reported by Cryptopolitan, it’s due to a social engineering scam on hardware wallets.
According to ZachXBT, “The attackers began transforming the stolen data. LTC & BTC Send to Monero via multiple instants exchange, This will cause the price of XMR to rise rapidly. BTC It was also bridged to Ethereum, Ripple, and Litecoin. saw chain. ”
Investigators also shared the address of the theft.
do Zack BXT Does it have anything to do with hyperliquid?
This donation has special meaning given ZachXBT’s research work on Hyperliquid’s platform.
In March 2025, ZachXBT exposed an elaborate scam and the identity of the person at the center of the scheme. That person happened to be a well-known trader on Hyperliquid’s decentralized exchange.
The man behind the scam was William Parker, a British national with a criminal history involving fraud and casino theft. At the time, ZachXBT’s investigation revealed that Parker’s trading wallet was receiving funds from phishing victims and other potentially illicit sources.
Parker was in the spotlight for making about $20 million through highly leveraged positions in HyperLiquid and GMX, including questionably timed trades ahead of major market announcements.
Separately, ZachXBT reported a $400,000 exploit involving Hypurr NFTs stolen from compromised wallets on the Hyperliquid network.
He also flagged and tracked fraudulent transactions by bad actors that occurred on Hyperliquid’s platform, but it’s worth noting that his work is not limited to the platform.
