Author: Nancy, PANews

On the evening of November 9, Hyperliquid's first L2 ecological project Elysium will officially launch its mainnet. Backed by the market heat of Hyperliquid, Elysium attracted a large amount of funding and project participation before its launch, and the Launchpads raced to open in advance, causing on-chain trading and token issuance activities to rapidly heat up.

However, before Elysium officially starts, market enthusiasm began to recede, and it failed to bring evident wealth creation effects. Meanwhile, controversies surrounding MEV bots continued to develop, and the fairness of trading was called into question, adding uncertainty to its subsequent development.

Amidst the excitement of token issuance, will high market value be difficult to maintain after launch?

With the market enthusiasm backed by Hyperliquid, Elysium attracted many projects to settle before its official mainnet launch, gaining market attention, and related ecological reviews and participation tutorials also emerged accordingly.

From on-chain data, Elysium had already attracted significant funding and users ahead of its launch. Elyscan data shows that, as of the time of writing, the cumulative number of transactions on the Elysium testnet has exceeded 6.379 million, and on-chain activity has notably surged since November, hitting a recent high on November 8, with daily transaction numbers at one point surpassing 1.4 million.

Funds flowing in also showed strong momentum. Elysium Explorer data indicates that the cumulative funds flowing into the cross-chain bridge have exceeded 210,000 HYPE, worth about 15.48 million dollars. Among them, about 98,000 HYPE accounts for cumulative cross-chain transfers in, while approximately 7,900 HYPE are cross-chain transfers out, with the inflow scale approximately 12.4 times that of the outflow.

Launchpads are often the earliest active sectors in new chain ecosystems and serve as important entry points for attracting users and capital flows. As Elysium's ecosystem gained momentum, the on-chain issuance and trading activities of tokens rapidly increased, and various Launchpads stepped up their layout, competing for early traffic, including the social trading platform Fomo, which announced a double incentive activity.

Arkhampad data shows that the token issuance and trading activities on the Elysium test network have noticeably heated up since early November, reaching a recent peak on November 8 with approximately 143,000 transactions in a single day and around 18,000 new tokens. So far, Elysium has issued more than 66,000 cumulative tokens, involving over 113,000 addresses.

Meanwhile, the competition among Launchpads has begun to show differentiation. Elyscreener data reveals that in the past 24 hours, the trading volume on Elysium's Launchpad was about 21.19 million dollars, with Ascend accounting for about 41% market share and Montra about 28%, together holding a large market share. It is noteworthy that Launchpads such as Ascend and Montra, which originally planned to wait until after the mainnet launch to start, all opened in advance, taking away a majority of the ecosystem's traffic and liquidity, leading to a rapid decline in some early-issued tokens and resulting in dissatisfaction among early participants.

However, the Elysium ecosystem has not shown a significant wealth creation effect; in fact, many players have called the market "too dull." According to GMGN data, currently, only six tokens in the Elysium ecosystem reach a market value of one million dollars, with the leading token e/acc valued at approximately 7.3 million dollars. Although a large number of tokens were issued in a short time, very few projects have truly gained sustained funding attention and achieved market value breakthroughs.

At present, some early speculators have profited and exited after the token's rise; some players have turned to forming LPs in search of new profit opportunities; and part of the capital has chosen to wait and see.

As the mainnet launch date approaches, the market enthusiasm for Elysium before its launch seems to have shown signs of cooling. Data shows that on November 9, the number of transactions on Elysium's mainnet was about 268,000, a decrease of about 80.9% from the peak. Meanwhile, token issuance and trading activities have also significantly cooled, with the daily number of token transactions (around 25,000) and new tokens (about 4,500) falling by approximately 82.5% and 75% respectively from their peaks.

Suspected to facilitate MEV, Elysium's privilege trading channels raise suspicions

Before the mainnet has even launched, Elysium is already embroiled in MEV controversies.

Recently, a community member reported in the Elysium developer group that a specific wallet address is suspected of using a private node and privileged permissions to run an MEV bot, frequently sandwiching ordinary users in Launchpad transactions and profiting from it. This address has previously been publicly flagged for high-frequency sandwich attacks and MEV bot activity, with on-chain records showing it has achieved profits close to one million dollars.

In response to community concerns, the Elysium team initially acknowledged that there were related issues and stated that they had revoked the RPC permissions of that address. However, shortly after, community members discovered that the address appeared to continue its MEV activities. In response, the team changed their statement, claiming that the related transactions were completed through the normal pathway of HyperEVM Delayed Inbox and denying that there was any abuse of sorter permissions.

The team's inconsistent responses did not quell the controversy but rather further aggravated the community's distrust. In the face of continued questioning from users, the Elysium team subsequently took measures to mute some doubters in the official Telegram group, and project founder Omnia was also accused of blocking related community members, leading to more dissatisfaction.

According to crypto KOL @y_cryptoanalyst, although mainstream L2 chains like Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum also use centralized sorters, they typically allow all users to follow relatively uniform transaction submission rules through mechanisms like priority fees or first-come-first-served (FCFS). Elysium's official documents also claim to adopt a Priority Fee sorting mechanism and do not set up privilege trading channels; however, in practice, there are two sets of submission pathways: authorized partner addresses can directly connect to the sorter for lower latency transaction submissions, while ordinary users must go through HyperEVM Delayed Inbox, facing longer transaction delays. This creates access privileges artificially, directly leading to asymmetric access. Authorized MEV bots can unscrupulously seize MEV value, enjoying a natural first-mover advantage.

Sandwich attacks typically profit by buying in and selling out immediately around user transactions, leveraging price changes, which ultimately impose additional slippage and transaction costs on ordinary traders. In new ecosystems with relatively thin liquidity and concentrated token issuance, such attacks are often easier to execute, further raising the actual trading costs for ordinary users.

In fact, MEV activity on the Elysium testnet has already shown high levels of activity. femtos.xyz data indicates that in the past seven days, 31 sandwich attack bots detected by the platform have executed over 24,000 attacks involving more than 6,000 traders, with approximately 303,000 dollars in attacked funds. The median single loss from affected transactions reached 3.4%, involving a total transaction volume of about 7.2 million dollars. Among them, the top two bots accounted for 49% of related profits.

For an emerging public chain, the fairness of the trading environment and the transparency of sorting rules are also key to attracting and retaining users and promoting the long-term development of the ecosystem.

The mainnet launch is only the beginning. For Elysium, leveraging the brand effect of Hyperliquid to make a strong entry is certainly important, but standing firm in the fiercely competitive on-chain ecosystem still poses significant challenges.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到[email protected]，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。