Source report: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher, published November 9, 2026, at 17:47:41 (UTC+8). This article preserves that reporting context.
Kinetiq’s Elysium Layer 2 network launched its mainnet on November 9, 2026, with a substantial roster of announced supporters. According to ChainCatcher, those included Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x, OpenSea, Derive, xStocks, Wormhole and Mayan, spanning trading, NFTs, tokenized assets and cross-chain infrastructure.
That gives Elysium a well-populated launch narrative. It does not yet establish that the network can solve the problem underpinning its pitch: turning Hyperliquid’s strength in perpetual futures into sustained activity across spot trading and applications.
The promise: connect Hyperliquid’s trading engine to a broader ecosystem
Elysium was built by Kinetiq, the Hyperliquid liquid-staking protocol behind kHYPE. At the time of the report, Kinetiq had more than $1.2 billion in total value locked and had expanded into institutional staking through iHYPE, the Earn yield product, the Launch deployment platform for HIP-3 perpetual exchanges, and its own Markets perpetual-trading platform.
The report identified publicly visible co-founders as pseudonymous developer Omnia, co-CEO Magnus Lai and CTO Justin Greenberg. Kinetiq previously raised a $1.75 million seed round led by Maven 11, with participants including Pier Two, Chorus One, IMC, Flowdesk and Susquehanna Crypto.
Elysium’s proposed role is to address an imbalance within Hyperliquid: strong perpetual-futures activity alongside weaker spot and DeFi adoption. ChainCatcher cited on-chain monitoring showing that Hyperliquid’s spot volume relative to Binance had fallen to a 15-month low, while activity in its HIP-2 automatic market-making mechanism was at its lowest since the fourth quarter of 2024.
The same report said PropAMM-led on-chain spot volume on Solana had long exceeded HyperCore spot volume by more than 30 times, while Robinhood Chain’s spot volume was roughly 10 times HyperCore’s. Those comparisons are reported figures, not independently verified measurements presented here.
Elysium’s intended asset pipeline runs from token issuance to AMM liquidity, then into HyperCore spot order books and HIP-3 perpetual markets. It also aims to let PropAMM-style applications access HyperCore order-book data. The proposition is therefore broader than adding another execution network: it is an attempt to connect asset creation, liquidity and derivatives within Hyperliquid’s ecosystem.
The throughput claim—and the launch-stage limitations
Elysium uses Arbitrum Orbit, with Nitro and standard ArbOS, but settles to HyperEVM rather than Ethereum. 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 put HyperEVM at roughly 30 million gas every 60 seconds, producing the advertised 600-fold throughput difference. These are capacity targets and an official comparison, not evidence of realized application demand.
The network uses an AnyTrust data-availability committee, with full-data publication to HyperEVM as an automatic fallback, and standard optimistic withdrawals. It runs Conduit’s G2 sequencer; the report described its underlying architecture as meeting SOC 2 Type 2 security standards.
At launch, however, Elysium used a single permissioned sequencer. Its configuration included neutral priority-fee ordering and no privileged transaction lanes, while MEV telemetry, Timeboost, BoLD-based permissionless fraud proofs and audits were listed as later hardening measures. Planned protections should not be confused with protections already deployed.
Standard EVM compatibility supports familiar tools and contracts, including MetaMask, Solidity and Uniswap-style pools. Compatibility can reduce migration friction, but it does not demonstrate that applications will attract durable users.
Token incentives depend on actual revenue
Elysium has no separate network token or points program. HYPE is its native gas token, tying network usage to Hyperliquid’s existing economic system.
Under the allocation disclosed by Kinetiq, approximately 50% of sequencer revenue would fund open-market KNTQ purchases and burns. Another roughly 25% would go to applications bringing traffic to the network, with the remainder entering the Kinetiq Treasury.
The mechanism links three constituencies: users spend HYPE for gas, KNTQ receives a proposed buyback-and-burn channel, and applications receive traffic incentives. But the size of those flows depends on actual network revenue. A percentage allocation alone says little about the eventual economic value.
ChainCatcher reported that KNTQ rose as much as 30% on the announcement day. That price reaction showed market interest in the proposal, not proof that the revenue model would deliver lasting value.
A crowded launchpad ecosystem is not the same as a mature market
Within weeks of the testnet launch, more than a dozen launchpads had announced support and thousands of tokens had been created, according to the report. Tools such as ElyScreener emerged to help users track the fragmented issuance activity.
The launch ecosystem included liquidity providers such as Uniswap, KyberSwap, Aero and ArcherSwap; issuance platforms including aka.fun, BunnyPad, PerpMe, Oxley, Neuriio and official partner Ascend; and derivatives or prediction-market projects such as Derive V3 and Speculate. NFT and gaming projects included AtlasHL, slymz, TORPOR, Frog Flip and Eloscape.
The concern is the composition of that activity. ChainCatcher described more than half of nearly 30 projects as launchpads or meme-related infrastructure. Heavy token issuance may create transactions, but it is not sufficient evidence of sustained spot liquidity or a diversified application economy.
There is also a direct impersonation risk. The report said officials had repeatedly warned that purported Elysium tokens, presales and points claims were suspicious. With no official Elysium token or points program, those offers should not be mistaken for sanctioned network participation.
The evidence gap
ChainCatcher compared Elysium’s partner-heavy debut with Circle’s Arc launch on September 16, which reportedly had more than 190 ecosystem partners and support from 11 traditional finance and payments institutions, including Mastercard and Visa, and Robinhood Chain’s July 1 launch, when nearly 100 projects announced support.
Those comparisons illustrate how established distribution and ecosystem relationships can populate a new chain quickly. They do not settle whether that activity will persist.
For Elysium, the meaningful test is whether its proposed asset pipeline produces sustained spot trading and useful applications—not simply more launches. Its throughput targets, revenue-sharing design and announced integrations describe a strategy. Actual trading activity, revenue and delivery of the remaining security measures will determine how much of that strategy becomes observable infrastructure.