Source reporting date: November 9, 2026, at 17:47:41 UTC+8. This article summarizes the historical report by Gu Yu of ChainCatcher.
Kinetiq’s Layer 2 network, Elysium, launched its mainnet on November 9, 2026, according to ChainCatcher. Built with Arbitrum Orbit and settling on HyperEVM rather than Ethereum, the network was presented as a way to expand application capacity around Hyperliquid’s trading infrastructure.
Its proposed role is more specific than adding another execution environment: connect token issuance and automated market-maker liquidity with HyperCore’s spot order books and HIP-3 perpetual markets. Whether that route produces sustained spot activity remained unproven at launch.
The proposed route from issuance to trading
Kinetiq, the liquid-staking protocol behind kHYPE, built Elysium. ChainCatcher reported that Kinetiq had more than $1.2 billion in total value locked, alongside institutional staking product iHYPE, yield product Earn, HIP-3 deployment platform Launch and its own perpetuals platform, Markets.
The report framed Elysium as a response to an imbalance within Hyperliquid: strong perpetuals trading but weaker spot and DeFi activity. It cited onchain monitoring showing Hyperliquid’s spot-volume share relative to Binance at a 15-month low and HIP-2 automated market-making activity at its lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2024.
The intended application path was:
- Issue a token.
- Establish initial AMM liquidity.
- Connect to HyperCore’s spot order book.
- Extend into HIP-3 perpetual markets.
Elysium also aimed to let PropAMM-style applications directly access HyperCore order-book data. These were intended connections and capabilities, not evidence that the full route had already generated meaningful trading volume.
Execution on Elysium, settlement on HyperEVM
Elysium uses Arbitrum Orbit, including Nitro and standard ArbOS. Its settlement destination is HyperEVM, Hyperliquid’s smart-contract environment, alongside the trading-focused HyperCore.
The reported performance targets were 300 million gas per second, 30 million gas per block and an approximately 100-millisecond canonical block interval. Official materials compared this with HyperEVM’s approximately 30 million gas every 60 seconds, describing a 600-fold difference. That is a comparison of stated gas capacity, not a demonstrated 600-fold improvement for every application.
Standard EVM compatibility was intended to support familiar tools and contracts, including MetaMask, Solidity applications and Uniswap-style pools.
The launch configuration’s trust boundaries
The reported architecture introduced several dependencies that matter separately from throughput:
- Data availability: an AnyTrust committee, with automatic fallback to publishing full data on HyperEVM.
- Withdrawals: the standard optimistic withdrawal mechanism.
- Transaction ordering: a single permissioned sequencer using Conduit’s G2, with neutral priority-fee ordering and no privileged transaction lane.
- Further hardening: MEV telemetry, Timeboost, BoLD-based permissionless fraud proofs and audits were listed as subsequent work rather than completed launch features.
ChainCatcher also described the underlying infrastructure as meeting SOC II Type 2 security standards. That statement should not be confused with permissionless sequencing or a completed fraud-proof rollout.
The practical handoff is therefore Elysium execution followed by settlement on HyperEVM, with committee-based data availability in the reported configuration. The source did not specify bridge contracts or asset-by-asset locking, burning or minting procedures, so it does not establish the exact transfer mechanics for individual assets.
HYPE for gas; proposed revenue flows to KNTQ and applications
Elysium launched without its own token or a points program. HYPE is its native gas token, linking transaction fees to Hyperliquid’s existing asset rather than a separate Elysium token.
According to the plan disclosed by Kinetiq, approximately 50% of sequencer revenue would fund open-market KNTQ buybacks and burns, approximately 25% would go to applications bringing traffic to the network, and the remainder would enter the Kinetiq treasury.
ChainCatcher reported that KNTQ rose as much as 30% on the announcement day. The article nevertheless cautioned that the long-term effect of buybacks would depend on actual network activity and revenue, not merely the allocation design.
Early integrations do not yet establish durable demand
Before the mainnet opening, projects announcing support included Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x, OpenSea, Derive, xStocks and cross-chain protocols Wormhole and Mayan. The report did not detail Wormhole’s or Mayan’s individual routes, verification arrangements or supported assets; their inclusion should not be read as confirmation of every possible cross-chain connection.
The early ecosystem also included a crowded token-launch sector. ChainCatcher reported more than a dozen launchpads and thousands of tokens created within weeks of the testnet launch. Named projects included aka.fun, BunnyPad, PerpMe, Oxley, Neuriio and official partner Ascend. Other applications spanned derivatives, prediction markets, NFTs and games.
That breadth came with a concentration risk: the report said more than half of nearly 30 projects were launchpads or meme-related infrastructure. Their presence alone did not demonstrate durable spot liquidity or sustained application use.
The source also relayed repeated official warnings about purported Elysium token sales, presales and points claims. With no official Elysium token or points program, such offers were flagged as suspicious.
Elysium’s central test was consequently not its launch-day integration list. It was whether additional execution capacity and access to Hyperliquid’s trading infrastructure could translate into sustained spot activity—while its sequencing and verification arrangements developed beyond the initial configuration.
