How to trade on Elysium, the Hyperliquid L2

Elysium is a general-purpose Hyperliquid Layer 2, with trading as its flagship use case. Kinetiq built it as an EVM chain with 100 ms blocks that uses HYPE for gas and settles to HyperEVM, and its mainnet goes live on November 9. This guide covers what Elysium is, why Hyperliquid needs a second EVM chain, how Elysium compares with HyperEVM, which apps are launching with it, and how to start trading and building on it.

What is Elysium?

Elysium is an optimistic rollup, a chain that executes transactions itself and posts the results to a parent chain, where they can be disputed during a challenge period. Our optimistic rollups overview covers the model in depth. Most optimistic rollups post to Ethereum. Elysium settles to HyperEVM instead. It runs on Arbitrum Orbit, the framework for launching chains on Arbitrum's Nitro software, and Conduit runs its sequencer, the node that orders transactions into blocks.

Hyperliquid itself is one Layer 1 with two parts. HyperCore is the exchange layer, where Hyperliquid's spot and perpetual order books live. HyperEVM is the EVM environment that runs next to it on the same chain. Our post on going all-in on Hyperliquid explains how the two parts fit together. Elysium adds a second place to run EVM code, one layer above HyperEVM. Tokens moving between Elysium and HyperCore pass through HyperEVM on the way.

Kinetiq also runs a liquid staking protocol on Hyperliquid, where users stake HYPE and receive kHYPE. On Elysium, HYPE is the only token you need. It bridges in 1:1 as native gas, with no wrapped version and no separate token to hold for gas.

When does Elysium mainnet launch?

Elysium's public mainnet goes live on November 9, 2026, and its public testnet is running now. Kinetiq is shipping the chain in stages:

• At launch. The chain goes live on stock ArbOS with HYPE gas, 100 ms blocks, and the full set of token bridges, including the path that takes an Elysium token to a HyperCore order book.
• About four weeks after mainnet. An ArbOS network upgrade adds two HyperCore features. A precompile, a built-in contract the chain itself serves, lets any contract read live HyperCore market data. A keeper lane lets contracts place orders on HyperCore's books.
• Later. Kinetiq plans block-time tuning, native Timeboost (Arbitrum's auction for priority in transaction ordering), permissionless fraud proofs through Arbitrum's BoLD protocol, and audits.

On launch day, Elysium will be a fast EVM that shares Hyperliquid's gas token and assets. The upgrade four weeks later connects Elysium contracts directly to HyperCore's books, and most of the HyperCore trading features in this guide depend on it.

Why does Hyperliquid need an L2?

HyperEVM limits its own capacity on purpose. Its small blocks carry 3M gas once a second, and its large blocks carry 30M gas once a minute. That keeps EVM activity in step with HyperCore, but it leaves little room for contracts that update their state many times a second.

Onchain market making is the clearest case. An automated market maker (AMM) is a contract that quotes prices from a pool of tokens. A prop AMM is a pool run by a single market maker that reprices its quotes from its own model, often several times a second, and every repricing is a transaction that costs gas. Kinetiq names high-frequency trading and professional market-making AMMs as Elysium's flagship tenants and tunes fees so that refreshing quotes 5 to 10 times a second stays cheap. The chain targets 300 Mgas/s (million gas per second) of execution, roughly two orders of magnitude more than HyperEVM.

The second reason is keeping that activity inside Hyperliquid. Gas, settlement, and assets all stay Hyperliquid-native, and Kinetiq describes a token lifecycle that never leaves the ecosystem. A token can launch on an Elysium AMM, deepen its liquidity on prop-AMM markets, graduate to a HyperCore spot order book, and later get a perpetual market through HIP-3, Hyperliquid's standard for builder-deployed perps.

Kinetiq has also committed 25% of sequencer fees to builders whose apps drive activity on the chain. Kinetiq's docs say that share funds ecosystem incentive programs for apps building on Elysium.

How is Elysium different from HyperEVM?

The two HyperCore rows come from Kinetiq's docs on HyperCore market data and trading on HyperCore from Elysium.

HyperEVM is where contracts that call HyperCore directly belong today, because its read precompiles and its CoreWriter contract are live now. Elysium won't expose those interfaces at launch. A contract ported from HyperEVM that calls them gets empty data back, which our Elysium API FAQ explains. Contracts that update state many times a second, such as quoting AMMs, keepers, and high-frequency strategies, fit Elysium better. After the upgrade, those contracts can also read full HyperCore books for ordinary call gas and place HyperCore orders in about 100 ms.

Elysium settles to HyperEVM, and every token heading to HyperCore passes through it, so most Elysium apps use both chains. Plan for an Elysium endpoint and a HyperEVM endpoint from the start.

Which apps are launching on Elysium?

Elysium, Kinetiq, and the teams themselves have announced these apps, grouped by what they do:

• Swaps and aggregators. Aero, a cross-chain exchange, enters Elysium on day one. KyberSwap's aggregator is ready on day one, and every app on the 0x swap API gets Elysium swaps from day one, including 0x's own Matcha app. Enso powers bridging and swaps from launch, and Uniswap has announced it's coming to Elysium.
• Trading apps. Elysium calls fomo, a social trading app, its exclusive trading partner. The Pumpfun app starts Elysium trading on November 9.
• Derivatives. Derive's onchain options and perps exchange supports Elysium on day one.
• Tokenized stocks. xStocks tokenized equities will be live on Elysium from day one.
• NFTs. OpenSea will be supporting Elysium from day one.
• Bridges. Wormhole and Mayan, an intent-based bridge, connect Elysium to other chains, according to the partner listings in Kinetiq's building guide.
• Data and analytics. Allium will be indexing Elysium from block one, and Frontrun is adding Elysium wallet labels from day one.

Each app runs its own contracts and token lists, so check the token addresses an app shows you against Kinetiq's canonical list, covered in the next section, before you swap.

How do you start trading on Elysium?

Trading on Elysium starts with HYPE on HyperEVM. If your HYPE sits on HyperCore, for example in a Hyperliquid trading account, move it to HyperEVM first with a HyperCore to HyperEVM transfer. Then bridge it to Elysium, where it arrives 1:1 as native gas. Kinetiq's bridging guide covers the HYPE route and the token bridges.

Add Elysium to your wallet with these settings. Kinetiq's connecting guide will list the mainnet chain ID and block explorer at launch:

A few mechanics differ from other EVM chains:

• Use the canonical tokens. WHYPE and USDC are Elysium's canonical tokens, and Kinetiq warns that look-alike tokens exist. Check any token address against that page before you trade or bridge it.
• There is no public mempool. A single sequencer orders transactions by priority fee within each block, with no privileged lanes. The RPC never exposes pending transactions, so other traders can't watch your transaction in a public mempool before it lands in a block.
• Leaving takes longer than arriving. Token deposits from HyperEVM typically land within a minute. Withdrawals back to HyperEVM finalize only after the rollup's challenge period, and then you claim them on HyperEVM, where the bridge lists them for you.
• A plain transfer costs slightly more than 21,000 gas. A HYPE transfer uses about 21,140 gas, because Nitro adds the cost of posting the transaction to HyperEVM. A wallet or script that hard-codes 21,000 fails with intrinsic gas too low.

Exits wait on the challenge period, so bridge in what you plan to use on Elysium and keep some HYPE there for gas.

How will Elysium apps trade on HyperCore?

After the upgrade, an Elysium contract can place orders on HyperCore's books in about 100 ms, measured from the order intent to a resting order. The trades happen on your own HyperCore account, so your funds never move to Elysium or to Kinetiq.

The design relies on API agents, a permission HyperCore already supports. An agent can place and cancel orders for an account, and HyperCore itself stops agents from withdrawing or transferring funds. An Elysium app that trades on HyperCore works like this:

• The app's contract binds a HyperCore trading account through a predeploy contract called ElysiumCoreWriter.
• Your HyperCore account approves a trade-only agent, signed for by Kinetiq's managed signing service or by the app's own signer.
• The contract emits order intents on Elysium.
• A keeper signs each intent as the agent and submits it to HyperCore, typically within about one HyperCore block.

Fills land in your account at your own fee tier. You can revoke the agent at any time with one HyperCore action, or trade directly with your account's main key, and neither step involves Elysium.

The same upgrade adds the market data precompile. Contracts can read HyperCore order books up to full depth, oracle, mark, and spot prices, and account balances and positions for ordinary call gas, with no oracle contract pushing updates. Each response carries the HyperCore block it came from, so a contract can reject data older than its own limit. Elysium's sequencer attests to that data. HyperCore can't prove it, because HyperCore doesn't publish state proofs today.

When an Elysium app asks your HyperCore account to approve an agent, that approval is the permission you're granting. Check which agent address it names, and revoke it on HyperCore when you stop using the app.

How do you connect to Elysium with Alchemy?

We're Elysium's primary RPC provider, and Kinetiq's docs list us as the recommended infrastructure provider for building on Elysium. Elysium mainnet will go live on Alchemy on November 9, at these endpoints:

To get an API key, create an app in the Alchemy dashboard, select Elysium Mainnet, and copy the key. Enable Hyperliquid Mainnet on the same app too, so you have a HyperEVM RPC endpoint for the bridge leg.

Install the Alchemy CLI to manage that app and query HyperEVM from your terminal:

Before you bridge, check your HYPE balance on HyperEVM. The result is in wei, where 1 HYPE is 10^18 wei:

The CLI's network list doesn't include Elysium yet, so send your first Elysium request with curl. Export your key as ALCHEMY_API_KEY first. The result is Elysium's chain ID in hex, which should match the chain ID in Kinetiq's connecting guide:

A trading bot should subscribe to new blocks over the WebSocket endpoint, because polling over HTTP skips blocks at a 100 ms cadence. viem works unchanged:

Reading blocks needs no chain object. To sign transactions, define Elysium with viem's defineChain, using the chain ID from Kinetiq's connecting guide. Don't use the elysiumTestnet export in viem/chains, which belongs to an unrelated chain.

Three details from our Elysium API FAQ matter for bots:

• Pending-transaction subscriptions stay silent. newPendingTransactions returns a subscription ID but never delivers results, because the sequencer exposes no mempool. Watch new blocks or receipts instead.
• Block ranges cover less time. At 100 ms blocks, a 10,000-block eth_getLogs request spans about 17 minutes of chain time, so covering one day of history with 10,000-block requests takes close to 90 of them.
• HyperCore precompiles aren't there yet. Until the upgrade, calls to HyperEVM's precompile addresses or CoreWriter on Elysium return empty data, so a ported contract fails when it decodes the result.

If you build with a coding agent, alchemy --json --no-interactive agent-prompt gives it the CLI's full command contract. Agent Skills and the Alchemy MCP server give agents the same access through skills or MCP. Our Elysium API quickstart has more request examples.

Start building on Elysium

Elysium mainnet will go live on Alchemy on November 9. Create an app in the Alchemy dashboard, select Elysium Mainnet, and you have RPC and WebSocket endpoints in a few minutes. No contracts, no waitlist, no minimum commitment. Add HyperEVM to the same app for the bridge leg. To stream the HyperCore order books that Elysium apps trade against, request HyperCore early access, and see our guide to Hyperliquid orders, trades, and fills for what that data looks like.