Elysium, a Layer 2 network built by Kinetiq, launched its mainnet on November 9, 2026, according to a report by Gu Yu at ChainCatcher. The network settles on HyperEVM and uses HYPE for gas, aiming to give applications more execution capacity while connecting them to Hyperliquid’s trading infrastructure.
Its central proposition is to help bridge a gap between Hyperliquid’s established perpetual-futures business and its less-developed spot and DeFi ecosystem. The launch establishes new infrastructure; whether it generates sustained trading activity remains an open question.
Original publication: November 9, 2026, at 17:47:41 UTC+8. Read the original ChainCatcher article.
What Kinetiq is trying to connect
Kinetiq is the liquid-staking protocol behind kHYPE. At the time of the report, ChainCatcher put its total value locked above $1.2 billion, with products spanning institutional staking through iHYPE, Earn, the HIP-3 perpetual-exchange deployment platform Launch, and its own perpetuals platform, Markets.
The report identified pseudonymous developer Omnia, co-CEO Magnus Lai and CTO Justin Greenberg among its publicly known co-founders. Kinetiq previously raised a $1.75 million seed round led by Maven 11, with participation from Pier Two, Chorus One, IMC, Flowdesk and Susquehanna Crypto.
Elysium’s intended asset pathway is:
Token issuance → automated market maker liquidity → HyperCore spot order books → HIP-3 perpetual markets.
The plan also calls for applications such as proprietary automated market makers, or PropAMMs, to access HyperCore order-book data directly.
ChainCatcher framed this as a response to an imbalance in Hyperliquid’s activity. Citing onchain monitoring data, it reported that Hyperliquid’s spot-volume share relative to Binance had reached a 15-month low, while activity in the HIP-2 automatic market-making mechanism was at its lowest 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 roughly 10 times HyperCore’s.
Those comparisons provide the report’s rationale for Elysium—not evidence that the new network has already closed the gap.
Architecture: Orbit execution, HyperEVM settlement
Elysium uses Arbitrum Orbit, Nitro and standard ArbOS, but settles on HyperEVM rather than Ethereum. HyperEVM is Hyperliquid’s smart-contract environment, operating alongside the trading-focused HyperCore.
According to the report, HyperEVM deliberately keeps blocks small to maintain a lean base layer. Elysium adds execution capacity above that environment, with the following targets:
| Parameter | Reported specification |
|---|---|
| Gas throughput | 300 million gas per second |
| Gas per block | 30 million |
| Canonical block interval | Approximately 100 milliseconds |
| Data availability | AnyTrust committee, with automatic fallback to publishing full data on HyperEVM |
| Withdrawals | Standard optimistic withdrawal mechanism |
| Sequencer | Conduit G2 |
| Native gas token | HYPE |
The official comparison cited by ChainCatcher was against HyperEVM processing approximately 30 million gas every 60 seconds, producing the advertised 600-fold capacity difference. These are stated technical targets and a capacity comparison, not a demonstrated 600-fold improvement for every application.
The report described the underlying infrastructure as meeting “SOC II Type 2” security standards. It also said standard EVM compatibility supports familiar tooling and contracts, including MetaMask, Solidity applications and Uniswap-style pools. That compatibility should not be read as proof that every application can migrate without changes.
What was live—and what remained on the roadmap
Elysium launched with a single permissioned sequencer, neutral priority-fee ordering and no privileged transaction channel, according to the source.
Several security and transaction-ordering features were listed as later hardening work:
- MEV telemetry;
- Timeboost;
- BoLD-based permissionless fraud proofs;
- audits.
The distinction matters: permissionless fraud proofs and audits were roadmap items in the report, not completed launch safeguards. The network’s mainnet launch should therefore be assessed separately from its planned security improvements.
HYPE pays for gas; KNTQ receives part of sequencer revenue
Elysium has no separate network token and no points program. HYPE is its native gas token, linking transaction-fee payments to Hyperliquid’s existing asset rather than introducing another gas token.
Kinetiq’s disclosed sequencer-revenue plan allocated:
- Approximately 50% to open-market KNTQ buybacks and burns;
- Approximately 25% to applications that bring traffic to the network;
- the remainder to the Kinetiq Treasury.
This is a proposed revenue-distribution mechanism, not a guarantee of meaningful buyback demand. Its scale depends on actual network activity and revenue.
ChainCatcher reported that KNTQ rose as much as 30% on the day of the announcement. That price move does not establish the model’s long-term effectiveness.
Announced integrations span trading, issuance and applications
Before mainnet opened, projects including Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x, OpenSea, Derive, xStocks, Wormhole and Mayan had announced support. Their presence covered trading, liquidity, derivatives, NFTs, tokenized assets and cross-chain infrastructure. Announced support, however, is not the same as demonstrated usage.
The report described a particularly crowded token-launch sector. Within weeks of testnet launch, more than a dozen launchpads had announced plans to join, and thousands of tokens had been created. It linked the emergence of tools such as ElyScreener to the difficulty of tracking those tokens in one place.
Its launch-day ecosystem overview included:
- Liquidity and trading: Uniswap, KyberSwap, Aero and ArcherSwap.
- Token issuance: aka.fun, BunnyPad, PerpMe, Oxley, Neuriio and official partner Ascend, with approaches including auction pricing, single-transaction launches, AI-agent token issuance and tokenized social accounts.
- Derivatives and prediction markets: Derive V3 and Speculate, the latter connecting to HIP-4 outcome markets.
- NFTs and gaming: AtlasHL, slymz, TORPOR, Frog Flip and Eloscape. Eloscape also supported Robinhood Chain and HyperEVM.
For context, ChainCatcher compared Elysium’s coordinated ecosystem launch with two other 2026 mainnet launches: Circle’s Arc on September 16, which it said had more than 190 ecosystem partners and backing from 11 traditional finance and payments institutions, including Mastercard and Visa; and Robinhood Chain on July 1, when nearly 100 projects announced support. These comparisons concern launch participation, not equivalent technical designs or adoption.
The first test is sustained spot activity
The source identified a concentration risk: more than half of the roughly 30 projects in its ecosystem overview were launchpads or meme-token infrastructure. Whether that mix can sustain liquidity and support a broader spot market was unresolved.
It also reported repeated official warnings about purported Elysium tokens, presales and points claims. Because Elysium has no native token of its own and no points program, such offers should not be confused with official network offerings.
Elysium’s practical test is whether additional execution capacity and access to Hyperliquid’s trading infrastructure translate into durable applications, liquidity and spot volume. The mainnet launch and announced integrations establish a starting point; they do not yet establish that outcome.