Elysium, a Layer 2 network built by Kinetiq within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, launched its mainnet on November 9, 2026, according to ChainCatcher’s report by Gu Yu. Its token design separates two functions: HYPE pays network transaction fees, while part of the network’s sequencer revenue is intended to fund KNTQ buybacks and burns.
Elysium has no separate network token and no points program. That distinction is especially important when assessing token sales or reward claims using its name.
What Elysium is trying to add
Kinetiq is the liquid-staking protocol behind kHYPE. At the time of the report, ChainCatcher put its total value locked—the value of assets deposited in the protocol—at more than $1.2 billion. Its other businesses included institutional staking product iHYPE, yield product Earn, HIP-3 perpetual-exchange deployment platform Launch and its own perpetual-trading platform, Markets.
The article frames Elysium as an attempt to address an imbalance in Hyperliquid: a strong perpetual-futures business alongside less-developed spot trading and decentralized-finance applications. Perpetual futures provide price exposure without an expiry date; spot markets trade the assets themselves.
Elysium aims to connect a longer asset-development path:
Token issuance → automated market maker liquidity → HyperCore spot order books → HIP-3 perpetual markets.
An automated market maker, or AMM, uses a programmed mechanism to facilitate trading. The proposed path would connect token launches and initial liquidity with Hyperliquid’s existing trading infrastructure. Whether it produces sustained spot-market activity remained an open question in the report.
HYPE and KNTQ have different roles
HYPE: the network’s gas token
Elysium uses HYPE as its sole native gas token. Gas is the fee paid to execute transactions on a network. Elysium therefore does not require users to obtain a newly issued Elysium-specific token for transaction fees.
This connects network use to HYPE’s fee-payment function. It does not, by itself, establish how much demand the network will generate or imply a particular token price.
KNTQ: the proposed buyback-and-burn recipient
According to the plan disclosed by Kinetiq and described in the article, sequencer revenue would be allocated approximately as follows:
- 50% to open-market purchases of KNTQ followed by burning those tokens.
- 25% to applications that bring traffic to the network.
- The remainder to the Kinetiq Treasury.
A sequencer orders transactions for processing. A buyback uses revenue to purchase a token; burning removes the purchased tokens from supply. Under this design, KNTQ is the buyback-and-burn asset, not Elysium’s gas token.
The article reported that KNTQ rose as much as 30% on the announcement day. It also stressed that any lasting effect of the mechanism would depend on actual network activity and revenue, rather than the allocation formula alone.
The network design—and its launch-stage limits
Elysium uses Arbitrum Orbit technology, including Nitro and standard ArbOS, but settles to HyperEVM, Hyperliquid’s smart-contract environment, rather than Ethereum.
Its stated performance targets were 300 million gas per second, 30 million gas per block and roughly 100-millisecond canonical block intervals. The official comparison described this as 600 times HyperEVM’s approximately 30 million gas every 60 seconds. These are stated parameters and comparisons, not evidence that applications will achieve equivalent improvements in practice.
The network uses an AnyTrust data-availability committee, with automatic fallback to publishing full data on HyperEVM, and standard optimistic withdrawals.
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 later hardening measures. Readers should distinguish those planned features from protections already operating at launch.
Applications are arriving, but activity quality matters
ChainCatcher reported support announced before launch from projects including Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x, OpenSea, Derive, xStocks, Wormhole and Mayan.
Token-launch platforms were particularly prominent. More than ten had announced plans to join within weeks of the testnet launch, and thousands of tokens had been created. However, the article noted that more than half of the roughly 30 ecosystem projects were launchpads or meme-token infrastructure. It questioned whether that mix could sustain the broader goal of strengthening spot markets.
No official Elysium token or points claim
The report said officials had repeatedly warned that purported Elysium tokens, presales and points claims were suspicious. The network’s stated configuration was no separate token and no points program.
The central distinction is straightforward: Elysium is the network, HYPE pays its transaction fees, and KNTQ is linked to the disclosed revenue-funded buyback mechanism. Those roles should not be confused with unofficial assets using the Elysium name—or with a promise of returns.
Original reporting: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher, November 9, 2026, at 17:47:41 (UTC+8). This article reflects that report’s launch-time information.