Source context: Gu Yu’s ChainCatcher article, published November 9, 2026, at 17:47:41 UTC+8. The launch details and market comparisons below reflect that report.
Kinetiq’s Elysium mainnet launched on November 9, 2026, with a proposition broader than adding another Layer 2: use Hyperliquid’s existing trading activity and users to support a more developed spot market and application ecosystem.
According to ChainCatcher, projects including Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x, OpenSea, Derive, xStocks, Wormhole and Mayan had announced support before the network opened. That roster spans trading, liquidity, derivatives, NFTs, tokenized assets and cross-chain infrastructure. Announced support, however, is not the same as sustained usage.
The central question is whether Elysium can turn that initial attention into functioning markets beyond Hyperliquid’s established perpetual-futures business.
Why Kinetiq is building it
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 perpetuals 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 participants including Pier Two, Chorus One, IMC, Flowdesk and Susquehanna Crypto.
The strategic problem is an imbalance within Hyperliquid. Its perpetuals business has developed much further than its spot markets and DeFi applications. Citing on-chain monitoring, ChainCatcher reported that Hyperliquid’s spot volume relative to Binance had reached a 15-month low, while activity in the HIP-2 automated market-making mechanism had fallen to its lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2024.
The article also reported that PropAMM-led spot volume on Solana had long exceeded HyperCore spot volume by more than 30 times, and that Robinhood Chain’s spot volume was approximately 10 times HyperCore’s. These are comparisons presented by the source, not independently verified measurements here.
Elysium’s proposed response is a connected asset pipeline:
Token issuance → AMM liquidity formation → HyperCore spot order books → HIP-3 perpetual markets.
The design also aims to let PropAMM-style applications access HyperCore order-book data. The thesis is therefore about connecting issuance, liquidity and trading—not simply increasing the number of chains in the ecosystem.
What the scaling design promises—and what remains unfinished
Elysium uses Arbitrum Orbit, comprising Nitro and standard ArbOS, but settles to HyperEVM rather than Ethereum. HyperEVM is Hyperliquid’s smart-contract environment, operating alongside the trading-focused HyperCore.
The reported performance targets are:
- 300 million gas per second;
- 30 million gas per block;
- approximately 100-millisecond canonical block intervals.
The official comparison cited by ChainCatcher puts HyperEVM at approximately 30 million gas every 60 seconds, producing a claimed 600-fold difference. That is a comparison of gas-capacity parameters, not evidence of 600 times more users, transactions or economic activity.
Data availability uses an AnyTrust committee, with automatic fallback to publishing full data on HyperEVM. Withdrawals follow a standard optimistic mechanism. The network uses Conduit’s G2 sequencer; the source describes its underlying architecture as meeting SOC II Type 2 security standards.
At launch, Elysium had a single permissioned sequencer, neutral priority-fee ordering and no privileged transaction lane. MEV telemetry, Timeboost, BoLD-based permissionless fraud proofs and audits were listed as subsequent hardening work. Those roadmap items should not be treated as protections already delivered.
Standard EVM compatibility supports familiar tools such as MetaMask, Solidity contracts and Uniswap-style pools. That reduces migration friction, but does not itself establish demand for applications.
HYPE pays for usage; KNTQ receives part of the revenue
Elysium has no separate network token or points program. Its native gas token is HYPE, tying transaction fees to Hyperliquid’s existing asset rather than creating another gas-token economy.
Under the allocation disclosed by Kinetiq, approximately:
- 50% of sequencer revenue would fund open-market KNTQ purchases and burns;
- 25% would go to applications bringing traffic to the network;
- the remainder would enter the Kinetiq Treasury.
These are distinct economic roles: HYPE is used for gas, while KNTQ is the intended beneficiary of part of the sequencer-revenue allocation. Neither should be confused with a separate “Elysium token.”
ChainCatcher reported that KNTQ rose as much as 30% on the announcement day. That price reaction shows market attention, not proof of a durable revenue engine. The significance of buybacks ultimately depends on actual network activity and income.
A broad partner list, but an issuance-heavy early ecosystem
The source reported more than a dozen launchpads announcing plans to join within weeks of the testnet launch, with thousands of tokens created. It described ElyScreener as a response to the difficulty of tracking those tokens in one place.
The mainnet ecosystem included liquidity infrastructure such as Uniswap, KyberSwap, Aero and ArcherSwap; launchpads including aka.fun, BunnyPad, PerpMe, Oxley, Neuriio and official partner Ascend; derivatives and prediction-market projects Derive V3 and Speculate; and NFT or gaming projects including AtlasHL, slymz, TORPOR, Frog Flip and Eloscape. Speculate was described as connecting to HIP-4 outcome markets.
That breadth needs qualification. According to the article, more than half of roughly 30 projects were launchpads or meme-related infrastructure. A busy token-creation environment may generate transactions without establishing lasting liquidity or a broader application economy.
The source compared Elysium’s partner-heavy debut with Circle’s Arc launch on September 16, which it said attracted more than 190 ecosystem partners and backing from 11 traditional finance and payments institutions, including Mastercard and Visa. It also cited nearly 100 projects supporting Robinhood Chain’s July 1 launch. These comparisons describe launch positioning, not equivalent adoption or market depth.
The evidence to watch
Elysium’s narrative is that an ecosystem strong in perpetuals can use its existing users and liquidity to address weaker spot markets and applications. The early partner roster supports the existence of developer interest; the proposed revenue split explains the incentives. Neither establishes that the strategy has succeeded.
The substantive test is whether token issuance leads to persistent liquidity, active HyperCore spot markets and recurring network revenue—and whether the planned security improvements are delivered.
There is also an immediate impersonation risk. The source reports repeated official warnings that purported Elysium tokens, presales and points claims are suspicious. With no official Elysium token or points program, those offers should not be mistaken for participation in the network itself.
