Kinetiq launches Elysium, a Hyperliquid-focused Layer 2 network
Tech & Launches ·
The protocol built the OP Stack chain to run alongside Hyperliquid and settle its long-standing throughput and spot-trading gaps.
Kinetiq has rolled out Elysium, a new Layer 2 built on the OP Stack and positioned to sit directly beside the Hyperliquid blockchain rather than as a separate destination chain, according to an announcement from the project. The chain runs HYPE as its gas asset so that value can move between HyperEVM and HyperCore without creating new wrapped or bridged tokens, and it is pitched at closing a performance gap that has limited how much trading activity Hyperliquid's existing execution environment can absorb.
The core pitch centers on speed: Elysium is expected to open with block times far faster than HyperEVM's current pace and to eventually match HyperCore's own block timing, a jump framed as large enough to support types of applications that were previously impractical. That matters because Kinetiq points to Hyperliquid's spot markets as underused relative to comparable venues — Solana's PropAMMs reportedly see volumes at least 30 times larger than HyperCore's, and Robinhood Chain's are around 10 times larger, a gap Elysium is meant to narrow through high-frequency-trading-friendly infrastructure and a reworked oracle precompile that surfaces deeper market data than HyperEVM's quote-only feed.
Beyond raw speed, Elysium is designed as a full pipeline for new tokens — letting projects launch and seed liquidity on AMMs, plug into PropAMMs, migrate onto HyperCore's spot orderbooks, and eventually list as permissionless perpetual markets under the HIP-3 framework, all inside a single connected system. Kinetiq says it already accounts for the bulk of HyperEVM's economic activity and total value locked, including leading positions in money markets and options, giving it a base to migrate onto the new chain.
The case for change rests partly on numbers describing HyperEVM's current strain: the network is said to generate only about $1 million a year in value versus $1 million to $6 million a day from HyperCore's perpetuals business, while ordinary swaps on HyperEVM have cost as much as $20 even with just a few thousand daily active users. Elysium's fee design routes sequencer revenue three ways — a quarter to builder incentives and rebates, a quarter to Kinetiq's treasury, and half toward open-market purchases of KNTQ that are then fully burned into Hyperliquid's Assistance Fund.