XPL flash crash investigation: 16 associated wallets withdrew margin in advance, leading Hyperliquid HLP to take over XPL long positions and incur a loss of $556,000

The liquidity service provider Quote Markets team member filo published a review of the XPL flash crash event on Hyperliquid. During the flash crash of XPL on Hyperliquid, 16 wallets associated with funds and trading activities withdrew approximately $2,038,600 in margin before the price plummeted, leading to HLP taking over a large number of XPL long positions.

HLP ultimately took over about 160 million XPL and completed the sale within approximately 75 minutes, incurring a loss of about $555,787, equivalent to 55.6% of the clearing vault's own funds. Investigations showed that 14 of the 16 wallets had connections in terms of funding sources or trading activities, with 12 wallets withdrawing funds in advance, contributing to 90.7% of the positions taken over by HLP. However, the investigation did not find direct evidence that these wallets caused the XPL crash, nor could it confirm whether they hedged on other trading platforms.

It is worth noting that these 16 wallets did not profit from this event on Hyperliquid, collectively incurring a loss of about $711,000. Additionally, XPL had already dropped about 6% before the first liquidation occurred on Hyperliquid, so the liquidation was not the starting point of this crash, and the initial active selling volume of Binance perpetual contracts was also significantly larger.