Pinned post
Strap in and consider this my official update on the kinetiq:native thesis, specifically regarding @Enter_Elysium.
Best way to do this is to refute some arguments I've seen:
1. "L2's are parasitic"
It's very lazy to compare Elysium to other L2s from the past. Robinhood Chain has generated a little over $50m in fees, of which $5m went to Arbitrum, and a whopping...$70k went to $ETH blob fees.
HyperEVM hyperliquid:native fees are burnt, whereas sequencer fees on Elysium go to kinetiq:native buys and builders (more on this later), but HyperEVM fees only account less than 1% of Hyperliquid total revenue. Papertrade is actually much more directly parasitic to hyperliquid:native; HyperEVM fees are peanuts even if Elysium vamped them entirely.
An under appreciated dynamic that a lot of people don't know is that HyperEVM USDC applies to AQAv2 hyperliquid:native revenue too, and USDC on Elysium will as well. Assuming the HyperEVM burns around $25k of hyperliquid:native a day, every additional $1b USDC that Elysium onboards in TVL would burn 4x that same amount due to AQAv2.
For reference, Solana has ~$7.5bn USDC and Base has $5b. Robinhood chain is predominantly USDG, which they monetize on, and ETH obviously gets nothing from. Imagine if Base contributed to $175m (3.5% of $5b) of value accrual to $ETH via their USDC TVL...maybe my $5k/7k $ETH calls would actually hit then 🙃
Beyond this, the entire selling point of Elysium is that it sits adjacent to HyperCore. propAMM's are functionally impossible on HyperEVM now due to the 1s block time (amongst other reasons). Additionally, on the HyperEVM, you can only read Hypercore price, not order book depth.
As a result, Solana does 25-50x the spot trading volume that Hypercore/HyperEVM handle. If Elysium can eat even a moderate chunk of on chain spot volume from Solana, especially in tokenized RWAs, the implications for corresponding hedging flows to Hyperliquid are enormous.
Elysium explicity enables net new flow and TVL to Hyperliquid, both of which are very accretive to hyperliquid:native itself. I would not be surprised if Elysium directly contributes an additional low 9 figure ARR for hyperliquid:native in 2027.
2. "L2's are bad investments and down only tokens"
As stated above, $ARB made about $5m so far from Robinhood Chain. Of that amount, a whopping...zero dollars made it to tokenholders. No buybacks, no burns, nothing.
50% of Elysium sequencer fees are directed at kinetiq:native buybacks. Even if you assume that Elysium only generates half the current sequencer fees of the current ghost town that is the HyperEVM, that'd still more than double their current revenue.
Currently, kinetiq:native buybacks as a % of market cap are about 1.5%, compared to 4-5% for hyperliquid:native. If Elysium generates only half of the sequencer fees of the current HyperEVM ($5m/yr), they'd be retiring token off the market at the same rate that hyperliquid:native does relative to market cap.
If Elysium can do closer to 50-75% of Base annualized sequencer fees ($30m), they'd be doing kinetiq:native buybacks at double the rate of hyperliquid:native as a % of market cap.
This is completely negating a likely increase in kHYPE TVL and other revenue streams (which there are numerous), like from launchpads like @AscendLaunch.
Ascend actually deserves their own section because they've commited to doing 30% of gross revenue as kinetiq:native buy/burns (50% to buys, 60% of that to burn). $PONS has generated $200m revenue in the last 2 months, but is currently only annualizing about $125m revenue, so we'll use a very conservative ~10% of the more conservative number. That'd add another $4m of kinetiq:native buybacks, which brings buyback yield/mcap well into the double digit %, over double hyperliquid:native.
3. "Why would there be activity on Elysium if there wasn't on the HyperEVM?"
Probably because the HyperEVM operates at the speed of smoke signals and has 0 support from Hyperliquid.
You have @Uniswap, @fomo, @Pumpfun etc all announcing integrations and deployments on Elysium day 1 after ignoring the HyperEVM all this time. @0xOmnia and the @Kinetiq_xyz team is putting on a master class in distribution, and you're seeing it play out this week.
Jeff and company are focusing on building the best perps platform in the world, and that's great, but this hands off approach has come at the expense of any support or curation of an on chain ecosystem.
That's left a massive gap that other chains have filled, but Elysium can bring all that activity back into the "house of all finance". Having a team that's fully dedicated to making this a reality will look nothing like the lack of attention the HyperEVM received.
4. "It'll be a flash in the pan memecoin chain and die out just like RHC activity has"
This is more speculative and it's hard to say. Elysium could have an epic and unsustainable PvElysium memecoin season by inheriting some of the wealth effect from both hyperliquid:native and kinetiq:native. Obviously this would absolutely moon kinetiq:native from sequencer fees/Ascend revenue, but that's shortlived.
Lively trenches aren't mutually exclusive with a real and innovative DeFi ecosystem though. As I mentioned before, Elysium will be uniquely able to plug in with, leverage, and read Hyperliquid orderbooks and liquidity. DeFi applications that couldn't be built anywhere else are made possible here.
A performant general purpose blockchain adjacent to HyperCore is the natural home to propAMM and HFT arbitrage against HIP3, which incentivizes deeply liquid spot RWA markets, which enables much higher LTV lending, which enables unique structured products and DeFi primitives to be built.
I do imagine that the trenches are built before more serious innovation comes about, but an important note here is that builders are getting 25% of sequencer fees as well. What builder wouldn't want to deploy on a new ecosystem, adjacent to the most successful app in crypto history, with a built in rev share agreement with the chain itself? Based on my conversations with Ascend and Montra, lots of serious teams want to build, not just memecoin deployers.
TLDR: It's not that complicated guys. kinetiq:native is a $120m mcap token that has a very clear path to buyback % yields multiples higher than hyperliquid:native, with an unprecedented ecosystem flywheel. It's both beta to hyperliquid:native and enhances the hyperliquid:native bull case. It might be the most asymmetric bet in crypto right now, and it's not conditional on some long shot thesis, just that there will be a large on chain ecosystem for the most important app in crypto.
Maybe it's a flop and a sell the news event on launch...or maybe it's all the best parts of Base/Hood sequencer fees combined with the revenue streams of $PUMP, $CAKE, solana:jtojtomepa8beP8AuQc6eXt5FriJwfFMwQx2v2f9mCL, ethereum:0x5a98fcbea516cf06857215779fd812ca3bef1b32 etc and heads towards billions of TVL and 9 figure annual revenue.
If you pattern match too hard to "L2 bad" or "HyperEVM sucks", it's from a place of being too 🏳️🌈🐻-pilled and/or lazy research.
Best way to do this is to refute some arguments I've seen:
1. "L2's are parasitic"
It's very lazy to compare Elysium to other L2s from the past. Robinhood Chain has generated a little over $50m in fees, of which $5m went to Arbitrum, and a whopping...$70k went to $ETH blob fees.
HyperEVM hyperliquid:native fees are burnt, whereas sequencer fees on Elysium go to kinetiq:native buys and builders (more on this later), but HyperEVM fees only account less than 1% of Hyperliquid total revenue. Papertrade is actually much more directly parasitic to hyperliquid:native; HyperEVM fees are peanuts even if Elysium vamped them entirely.
An under appreciated dynamic that a lot of people don't know is that HyperEVM USDC applies to AQAv2 hyperliquid:native revenue too, and USDC on Elysium will as well. Assuming the HyperEVM burns around $25k of hyperliquid:native a day, every additional $1b USDC that Elysium onboards in TVL would burn 4x that same amount due to AQAv2.
For reference, Solana has ~$7.5bn USDC and Base has $5b. Robinhood chain is predominantly USDG, which they monetize on, and ETH obviously gets nothing from. Imagine if Base contributed to $175m (3.5% of $5b) of value accrual to $ETH via their USDC TVL...maybe my $5k/7k $ETH calls would actually hit then 🙃
Beyond this, the entire selling point of Elysium is that it sits adjacent to HyperCore. propAMM's are functionally impossible on HyperEVM now due to the 1s block time (amongst other reasons). Additionally, on the HyperEVM, you can only read Hypercore price, not order book depth.
As a result, Solana does 25-50x the spot trading volume that Hypercore/HyperEVM handle. If Elysium can eat even a moderate chunk of on chain spot volume from Solana, especially in tokenized RWAs, the implications for corresponding hedging flows to Hyperliquid are enormous.
Elysium explicity enables net new flow and TVL to Hyperliquid, both of which are very accretive to hyperliquid:native itself. I would not be surprised if Elysium directly contributes an additional low 9 figure ARR for hyperliquid:native in 2027.
2. "L2's are bad investments and down only tokens"
As stated above, $ARB made about $5m so far from Robinhood Chain. Of that amount, a whopping...zero dollars made it to tokenholders. No buybacks, no burns, nothing.
50% of Elysium sequencer fees are directed at kinetiq:native buybacks. Even if you assume that Elysium only generates half the current sequencer fees of the current ghost town that is the HyperEVM, that'd still more than double their current revenue.
Currently, kinetiq:native buybacks as a % of market cap are about 1.5%, compared to 4-5% for hyperliquid:native. If Elysium generates only half of the sequencer fees of the current HyperEVM ($5m/yr), they'd be retiring token off the market at the same rate that hyperliquid:native does relative to market cap.
If Elysium can do closer to 50-75% of Base annualized sequencer fees ($30m), they'd be doing kinetiq:native buybacks at double the rate of hyperliquid:native as a % of market cap.
This is completely negating a likely increase in kHYPE TVL and other revenue streams (which there are numerous), like from launchpads like @AscendLaunch.
Ascend actually deserves their own section because they've commited to doing 30% of gross revenue as kinetiq:native buy/burns (50% to buys, 60% of that to burn). $PONS has generated $200m revenue in the last 2 months, but is currently only annualizing about $125m revenue, so we'll use a very conservative ~10% of the more conservative number. That'd add another $4m of kinetiq:native buybacks, which brings buyback yield/mcap well into the double digit %, over double hyperliquid:native.
3. "Why would there be activity on Elysium if there wasn't on the HyperEVM?"
Probably because the HyperEVM operates at the speed of smoke signals and has 0 support from Hyperliquid.
You have @Uniswap, @fomo, @Pumpfun etc all announcing integrations and deployments on Elysium day 1 after ignoring the HyperEVM all this time. @0xOmnia and the @Kinetiq_xyz team is putting on a master class in distribution, and you're seeing it play out this week.
Jeff and company are focusing on building the best perps platform in the world, and that's great, but this hands off approach has come at the expense of any support or curation of an on chain ecosystem.
That's left a massive gap that other chains have filled, but Elysium can bring all that activity back into the "house of all finance". Having a team that's fully dedicated to making this a reality will look nothing like the lack of attention the HyperEVM received.
4. "It'll be a flash in the pan memecoin chain and die out just like RHC activity has"
This is more speculative and it's hard to say. Elysium could have an epic and unsustainable PvElysium memecoin season by inheriting some of the wealth effect from both hyperliquid:native and kinetiq:native. Obviously this would absolutely moon kinetiq:native from sequencer fees/Ascend revenue, but that's shortlived.
Lively trenches aren't mutually exclusive with a real and innovative DeFi ecosystem though. As I mentioned before, Elysium will be uniquely able to plug in with, leverage, and read Hyperliquid orderbooks and liquidity. DeFi applications that couldn't be built anywhere else are made possible here.
A performant general purpose blockchain adjacent to HyperCore is the natural home to propAMM and HFT arbitrage against HIP3, which incentivizes deeply liquid spot RWA markets, which enables much higher LTV lending, which enables unique structured products and DeFi primitives to be built.
I do imagine that the trenches are built before more serious innovation comes about, but an important note here is that builders are getting 25% of sequencer fees as well. What builder wouldn't want to deploy on a new ecosystem, adjacent to the most successful app in crypto history, with a built in rev share agreement with the chain itself? Based on my conversations with Ascend and Montra, lots of serious teams want to build, not just memecoin deployers.
TLDR: It's not that complicated guys. kinetiq:native is a $120m mcap token that has a very clear path to buyback % yields multiples higher than hyperliquid:native, with an unprecedented ecosystem flywheel. It's both beta to hyperliquid:native and enhances the hyperliquid:native bull case. It might be the most asymmetric bet in crypto right now, and it's not conditional on some long shot thesis, just that there will be a large on chain ecosystem for the most important app in crypto.
Maybe it's a flop and a sell the news event on launch...or maybe it's all the best parts of Base/Hood sequencer fees combined with the revenue streams of $PUMP, $CAKE, solana:jtojtomepa8beP8AuQc6eXt5FriJwfFMwQx2v2f9mCL, ethereum:0x5a98fcbea516cf06857215779fd812ca3bef1b32 etc and heads towards billions of TVL and 9 figure annual revenue.
If you pattern match too hard to "L2 bad" or "HyperEVM sucks", it's from a place of being too 🏳️🌈🐻-pilled and/or lazy research.
