The Hyperliquid Foundation has made a significant donation of 10,000 HYPE tokens to prominent pseudonymous blockchain investigator ZachXBT, valued at approximately $254,000. This contribution, confirmed by ZachXBT on January 18, 2026, represents the second-largest single donation he has ever received from any entity.
ZachXBT updated his public contributor leaderboard, which now lists the Optimism Foundation in first place, followed by the Hyperliquid Foundation, Octant, The White Whale, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Unipcs, Nouns, CL207, and High Stakes Capital in tenth place. The investigator announced the donation via his Telegram channel, thanking Hyperliquid for their support.
The donation follows ZachXBT's recent high-profile investigation into a massive $282 million hardware wallet theft, which he exposed on January 10, 2026. The theft involved 2.05 million LTC and 1,459 BTC stolen from a single victim through what appears to be supply chain manipulation or social engineering tactics. The attacker converted the stolen Bitcoin and Litecoin into Monero to obscure the trail, causing a temporary price spike in the privacy coin.
ZachXBT, who also serves as an advisor at crypto investment firm Paradigm, maintains transparency about his funding sources. The donations enable him to continue working independently, tracking crypto crimes and scams without relying on traditional funding models that might compromise his objectivity. His investigations have helped recover millions in stolen funds and exposed numerous fraudulent operations across the industry.
Market observers view this donation as a symbolic gesture of gratitude from a major DeFi protocol toward an investigator whose work has been instrumental in exposing fraudulent activities. While neither party provided a specific reason for this grant, ZachXBT has previously been vital in identifying malicious actors targeting the HyperEVM and other decentralized perpetual exchanges.
The use of the native HYPE token for this donation underscores the asset's growing utility and market acceptance since its high-profile launch in late 2024. As the Hyperliquid decentralized exchange continues to gain trading volume, the HYPE token has become a primary vehicle for the foundation's community-driven initiatives and strategic partnerships.
This move represents an evolving relationship between high-performance blockchain platforms and independent security researchers. By providing significant financial backing, Hyperliquid is effectively subsidizing the expensive process of on-chain forensics, which often requires tracking hundreds of millions of dollars across complex address clustering and mixer protocols.
