Source published November 9, 2026, at 17:47:41 UTC+8. Based on reporting by Gu Yu for ChainCatcher.
Kinetiq’s Layer 2 network Elysium launched its mainnet on November 9, 2026, according to ChainCatcher. Its pitch is to build on Hyperliquid’s existing liquidity and users while addressing a weaker part of the ecosystem: spot trading and applications beyond perpetual futures.
The launch attracted advance support announcements from Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x, OpenSea, Derive, xStocks, Wormhole and Mayan, spanning trading, NFTs, tokenized assets and cross-chain infrastructure. Those announcements establish interest—not evidence of sustained usage.
Why Hyperliquid needs the expansion
Elysium was built by Kinetiq, the Hyperliquid liquid-staking protocol behind kHYPE. ChainCatcher reported that Kinetiq had more than $1.2 billion in total value locked, alongside institutional staking product iHYPE, yield product Earn, HIP-3 perpetual-exchange deployment platform Launch and its own perpetual-trading platform, Markets.
Its publicly identified co-founders include pseudonymous developer Omnia, co-CEO Magnus Lai and CTO Justin Greenberg. The report also cited a $1.75 million seed round led by Maven 11, with participation from Pier Two, Chorus One, IMC, Flowdesk and Susquehanna Crypto.
The strategic problem is the gap between Hyperliquid’s strong perpetual-futures business and its less-developed spot and DeFi activity. ChainCatcher cited on-chain monitoring showing that:
- Hyperliquid’s spot volume relative to Binance had fallen to a 15-month low.
- Activity in its HIP-2 automated market-making mechanism was at its lowest since the fourth quarter of 2024.
- Solana’s PropAMM-led on-chain spot volume had consistently exceeded HyperCore spot volume by more than 30 times, while Robinhood Chain’s was roughly 10 times HyperCore’s.
These comparisons are reported context, not proof that Elysium will close the gap.
Elysium’s intended asset pipeline runs from token issuance to AMM liquidity, then HyperCore spot order books and HIP-3 perpetual markets. It also aims to let PropAMM-style applications access HyperCore order-book data.
The technical pitch—and its limits
Elysium uses Arbitrum Orbit, including Nitro and standard ArbOS, but settles to HyperEVM rather than Ethereum. The design seeks to expand application capacity around Hyperliquid’s deliberately small HyperEVM blocks.
Its stated targets are 300 million gas per second, 30 million gas per block and approximately 100-millisecond canonical block intervals. The official comparison cited by ChainCatcher puts HyperEVM at roughly 30 million gas every 60 seconds, producing the claimed 600-fold capacity difference. These are configuration targets and a stated comparison, not demonstrated application throughput.
Data availability uses an AnyTrust committee, with full data publication to HyperEVM as an automatic fallback. Withdrawals follow a standard optimistic mechanism. The network runs Conduit’s G2 sequencer; the report describes its underlying architecture as meeting SOC 2 Type 2 standards.
At launch, however, Elysium used one permissioned sequencer. MEV telemetry, Timeboost, BoLD-based permissionless fraud proofs and audits were listed as later hardening work. Permissionless fraud proofs were not yet live.
Standard EVM compatibility supports familiar tools such as MetaMask, Solidity contracts and Uniswap-style pools. That compatibility reduces migration friction, but does not establish that every application will migrate without work.
HYPE pays for gas; KNTQ gets a proposed revenue link
Elysium has no separate network token and no points program. HYPE is its native gas asset, tying transaction fees to Hyperliquid’s existing economy.
Under the allocation disclosed by Kinetiq:
- Approximately 50% of sequencer revenue would fund open-market KNTQ buybacks and burns.
- Approximately 25% would reward applications bringing traffic to the network.
- The remainder would go to the Kinetiq Treasury.
ChainCatcher reported that KNTQ rose as much as 30% on the announcement day. That price move shows a market reaction, not validation of the revenue model. The scale and durability of buybacks depend on actual network activity and income.
A crowded ecosystem, weighted toward token launches
The launch followed a pattern ChainCatcher compared with two other 2026 debuts: Circle’s Arc on September 16, with more than 190 ecosystem partners and backing from 11 traditional finance and payments institutions, including Mastercard and Visa; and Robinhood Chain on July 1, with nearly 100 projects announcing support.
Elysium’s early ecosystem was particularly heavy on launchpads. Within weeks of its testnet launch, more than a dozen launchpads had announced plans to join, and thousands of tokens had been created. The report linked the emergence of tools such as ElyScreener to the difficulty of tracking those tokens in one place.
The reported lineup included liquidity infrastructure from Uniswap, KyberSwap, Aero and ArcherSwap; issuance platforms such as aka.fun, BunnyPad, PerpMe, Oxley, Neuriio and official partner Ascend; and derivatives or prediction-market projects Derive V3 and Speculate, the latter connecting to HIP-4 outcome markets. NFT and gaming names included AtlasHL, slymz, TORPOR, Frog Flip and Eloscape.
But more than half of the nearly 30 projects described were launchpads or memecoin infrastructure. Token creation and ecosystem listings do not, by themselves, demonstrate durable demand or deeper spot liquidity.
There is also a direct impersonation risk. According to the report, officials repeatedly warned that purported Elysium tokens, presales and points claims were suspicious. They conflict with the network’s stated no-token, no-points design.
What remains unproven
Elysium gives Hyperliquid an application-expansion strategy backed by an established ecosystem participant. Its launch partners, HYPE gas model and proposed KNTQ revenue allocation explain the attention.
The unresolved questions are more practical: whether applications attract lasting users, whether spot liquidity improves, whether meaningful revenue develops, and whether planned security protections ship. Launch-day support is a starting point—not evidence that Hyperliquid’s spot-market weakness has been solved.