A "runaway bot" triggered a violent price spike for the HYPE token, briefly sending it to $98 and igniting a debate over liquidity and frontend transparency on decentralized exchanges.

Hyperliquid’s HYPE token skyrocketed from $47 to roughly $98 in a minute on the decentralized exchange Lighter before crashing back down on Monday.

In a tweet, the Lighter team stated that a “runaway bot” aggressively cleared the order book, jamming automated orders through a thin-liquidity market.

While the team scrubbed the massive price wick from its official front-end display to address "scaling issues for the chart," immutable on-chain data confirms the event.

One trader claimed to have captured a $600,000 profit during the anomaly, highlighting the advantages of constant monitoring in DeFi's volatile markets.

"While the trader may appear lucky, this episode underlines that vigilant monitoring of marginal markets, order-book asymmetries, and bot activity can yield outsized gains," Lacie Zhang, Research Analyst at Bitget Wallet, told Decrypt. "The opportunity existed precisely because someone was watching and capitalized on a bot-driven distortion before the market corrected."

"We can see that $HYPE spiking to $100 on Lighter.xyz was a classic case of a liquidity vacuum exploited by an autonomous trading bot," Slava Demchuk, CEO of AMLBot, told Decrypt. It reflects how low-volume DEX environments increase price anomalies, Demchuk added, suggesting that while it may look like a lucky play, this event highlights why real-time DeFi monitoring is important.

Illiquid crypto markets

The event underscores systemic risks in illiquid crypto markets.

"Unchecked bot-driven anomalies can distort price discovery, mislead liquidity providers about real market depth, and create false equilibrium states," Zhang said.

"Bot-driven anomalies distort prices and drain liquidity, creating artificial volatility that can trigger cascading effects across markets," Youngsun Shin, Head of Product and Partnerships at Flipster, told Decrypt. "Over time, such gaps can lead to death spirals, destabilizing market makers or even causing DeFi protocols to collapse."

Experts suggested that DEXs need embedded safeguards to prevent repeat incidents. "DEXs should embed market protection measures directly into smart contracts, such as circuit breakers, volatility throttles, and liquidity thresholds," Shin added.

The team's decision to alter the front-end charting has also drawn scrutiny. "By removing the extreme wick, Lighter sought to enhance the user experience while preserving raw onchain data," Zhang told Decrypt. "But that decision raises trust questions: some traders see it as masking real market conditions."

"Removing wicks from front-end charts may end up reducing price volatility," Demchuk said, but cautioned that it "risks undermining transparency—and that’s definitely something regulators and traders both watch closely."

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