Elysium launch day is here. Kinetiq’s Layer 2 for Hyperliquid went live on mainnet at 13:00 UTC on November 9, 2026, with HYPE as the gas token, about 30 apps on day one, and OKX Wallet as the first wallet to support it. The official bridge is open, which means the unofficial routes I wrote about last week are no longer needed.
We have been building up to this for a week. First came what Elysium is, then the three ways to bridge. This post is the recap: what shipped, who showed up, what is still missing, and what the critics are saying. Keep in mind that HYPE itself is having a rough day, which I covered in my HYPE launch day trade earlier this morning.
What Went Live on Elysium Launch Day
Elysium announced on X that mainnet is officially live. The timing lined up with Asian evening hours, 21:00 in Hong Kong, which is where a lot of Hyperliquid’s volume sits.
Here is what is confirmed running from the first block:
The chain itself. An Arbitrum Orbit rollup that settles to HyperEVM instead of Ethereum. Target block time is around 100 milliseconds, with a throughput goal of 300 million gas per second. Kinetiq frames that as roughly 100 times HyperEVM’s current capacity.
HYPE as gas. You bridge HYPE 1:1 from HyperEVM, and the same HYPE pays your fees. There is no new gas token, no wrapping step, and no points program.
The official bridge. The canonical route runs through Enso. Elysium’s own account posted the link at launch. Use that one and ignore every “mirror” in the replies.
Wallet support. OKX Wallet integrated Elysium at launch and claims the first-mover spot. Zerion added support too, and MetaMask works with the custom network details.
Cross-chain. Wormhole shipped Elysium mainnet support in its October 22 release, so messaging to and from other chains worked from minute one.
Who Showed Up on Day One
Roughly 30 projects were live or ready at launch, and over half of them are launchpads or meme infrastructure. That tells you what the first weeks will look like.
Trading apps
The fomo app and Pump.fun both support Elysium from launch, giving the chain two retail front doors. Trading in fomo needs no bridge at all, which is why I keep pointing readers there in my fomo app review. Banana Gun added Elysium to its chain list a week early.
DEXs and liquidity
Nest DEX was built to be live from the first block. Dawn is the second native DEX. Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x and Oku deployed as well. Oku made the most interesting commitment: 40% of its net Elysium trading fees go to buying and burning KNTQ, announced November 7.
Derivatives and prediction markets
Derive V3 brings options. Speculate is a prediction market app connected to Hyperliquid’s HIP-4 outcome markets. Markets.xyz, Kinetiq’s own HIP-3 venue, is in the lineup too.
Launchpads
Montra and Citadel are the two named by Elysium’s ecosystem page. Beyond those, over a dozen launchpads announced within weeks of testnet, and thousands of test tokens were created. Expect the same flood on mainnet. Most of them go to zero. Thin liquidity and lookalike tickers are the rule, not the exception.
What Is Not Live Yet
Launch day is a fast EVM chain. The feature that makes Elysium different is not here yet.
The HyperCore hooks, EL1Read and EL1Write, let a contract on Elysium read live Hyperliquid order book data and route orders onto HyperCore directly. Kinetiq slots them into an upgrade roughly four weeks after mainnet, so early December. Until then, Elysium and HyperCore are two separate systems, and an app has to handle the case where one side succeeds and the other fails.
Security is also still a roadmap item. A single Conduit sequencer orders transactions. Validation is permissioned. Permissionless fraud proofs through Arbitrum BoLD, MEV telemetry and Timeboost all sit in a later “hardening” phase. The data availability committee registered on HyperEVM is a one-of-one setup, meaning one member counts as honest.
None of this is unusual for a new L2. Base and Arbitrum launched with training wheels too. It does mean withdrawals wait through a challenge period, and that bridging only what you plan to trade is the sane approach. We ran through what a hack would do to the big perp venues in which DEX is safe, and a week-old chain deserves more caution than any of them.
The KNTQ Question
Elysium has no token. The value flows to KNTQ, Kinetiq’s governance token, and that is where the sceptics are focused.
Sequencer revenue splits three ways. Half buys KNTQ on the open market and sends it to the Hyperliquid Assistance Fund, where it is burned. A quarter goes to builders whose apps bring traffic. The last quarter funds Kinetiq’s treasury. We tracked Kinetiq’s earlier airdrop on our Kinetiq listing, and the protocol already buys back roughly $130,000 of KNTQ a month from its staking and Markets income.
KNTQ hit an all-time high of $0.45 on October 28 and trades around $0.50 today. Then comes the catch. On November 27, the team and investor cliff ends, and about 12.9 million KNTQ unlocks every month for two years. At today’s price that is roughly $6.5 million a month hitting the market.
Analysts have run the numbers. An Elysium earning Base-level sequencer fees would cover about 20% of those unlocks. Arbitrum-level fees cover around 6%. Covering all of it would take something like $425,000 a day in fees, five times what Base earns. The burn alone will not absorb that. Elysium has to bring real buyers, and it has 18 days of launch momentum before the first unlock lands.
That is the honest framing. The buyback design is clean. Whether it matters depends entirely on volume.
Scams to Expect This Week
Every chain launch brings the same playbook, and Elysium’s official channels have already warned about it.
There is no Elysium token, no presale, no points program and no claim. Any site, tweet or DM offering one is a scam. Fake bridges will copy the real one and buy search ads. Lookalike tickers for the early tokens are already trading, as I found when I bridged early. MetaMask flagged one community bridge as phishing before launch.
Use a fresh wallet with only what you can afford to lose. Take every link from Elysium’s or Kinetiq’s own accounts. Check contract addresses twice. If you want exposure without touching a bridge, the fomo listing explains how trading there works.
What I Am Doing
I bridged HYPE to Elysium’s private mainnet a week ago through a community bridge, with a small bag and a burner wallet. Today I am watching rather than aping. The first 48 hours of any chain are where the rugs are thickest and the liquidity thinnest.
What I am actually tracking: daily transactions, fees collected, and how much HYPE sits bridged. Those three numbers decide whether the KNTQ buyback story has legs before November 27. If fees ramp, December’s HyperCore hooks turn Elysium into something new. If they do not, it is another fast chain with launchpads on it.
For context on how the base layer works, our Hyperliquid review covers HyperCore and HyperEVM. And if you have been farming on HyperEVM already, the HyperEVM airdrops hub tracks every live program.
Keep This Content Free
Launch days are when exchanges run their best promos. If you are moving HYPE around today anyway, these two links help us keep the lights on.
Grab the OKX welcome rewards or the Bybit sign-up bonus through our referral links before you deposit.
Final Words
Elysium launch day delivered what was promised: a live chain, HYPE as gas, an official bridge, and a real lineup of apps. It also arrived on a red day for HYPE, with a whale unstaking and the whole market nursing a weekend liquidation wave.
The next two checkpoints are clear. November 27 is the KNTQ unlock. Early December is the HyperCore upgrade. Between those dates, the chain has to prove people want to trade on it. I will update this post once the first week of data is in.
Go slow. Be active, but be careful.
FAQ
Is Elysium mainnet live?
Yes. Elysium mainnet went live on November 9, 2026 at 13:00 UTC. The official bridge, OKX Wallet support, and about 30 day-one apps including fomo, Pump.fun and Nest DEX are live.
What launched on Elysium launch day?
The chain, the official Enso bridge, OKX Wallet and Zerion support, Wormhole connectivity, DEXs Nest and Dawn, Uniswap, KyberSwap, 0x, Oku, Derive V3, Speculate, and launchpads Montra and Citadel.
Does Elysium have a token or airdrop?
No. Elysium has no token, no points program and no claim. Fees are paid in HYPE, and half of sequencer revenue buys and burns KNTQ. Any Elysium token offer is a scam.
What is missing from Elysium at launch?
The HyperCore read and write hooks arrive about four weeks after mainnet. Validation is permissioned, a single sequencer orders transactions, and permissionless fraud proofs are still on the roadmap.
Why does the November 27 date matter for Elysium?
That is when Kinetiq’s team and investor tokens begin vesting, about 12.9 million KNTQ per month for two years. Elysium’s sequencer fees need to grow fast for the KNTQ buyback to offset it.
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