FAQ

Short answers to the questions people ask most. Each answer links to the page with the full detail.

Questions

What is Bythos?

Bythos is a depth-priced credit protocol on Elysium, the Hyperliquid L2 built by Kinetiq. You deposit an Elysium token and borrow HYPE against it. Your limit is 70% of the token's Depth Value: the HYPE you would actually receive selling your quantity now into the bids, stopping at 15% below the best bid. See Overview.

Why not just use a TWAP?

A TWAP from a thin pool can be pumped. An attacker buys the price up, holds it for the length of the average, deposits and borrows against the inflated value. A TWAP also says nothing about size: it values 1,000 tokens and 5% of supply at the same price per token, even though selling the larger amount would raise far less per token.

Bythos uses a TWAP only as a ceiling. Depth Value is computed from the exact output of a sale, the value used for borrowing is the minimum over the last 15 minutes, and it can never exceed 0.9 × the 30-minute TWAP. See Sounding and Anti-manipulation.

Why is my limit so much lower than my tokens' market value?

Because market value is quantity × last price, and that is not what your tokens would raise if sold. In the example pool used in these docs, 1,000,000 tokens against 100 HYPE, 500,000 tokens have a spot value of 50 HYPE but a Depth Value of about 7.80 HYPE, so the limit is about 5.46 HYPE. Small positions are limited by the price cap instead: 20,000 tokens get a limit of 1.26 HYPE against a spot value of 2.0 HYPE. Larger positions get a lower effective LTV automatically. See The problem.

Why can't I borrow right after depositing?

New collateral sits in a pending bucket for 50 blocks, about 5 s on Elysium, before it counts toward your limit. A new deposit restarts the count for the whole pending bucket. This stops deposits of flash-borrowed tokens and same-block pump-and-borrow sequences. Pending collateral still counts toward health. See Lines.

What if nobody liquidates?

Then an unhealthy Line stays open, and if its collateral keeps losing value, the risk of bad debt grows. Anyone can call Trawl, and each call pays 3% of the debt to the caller in HYPE, so there is a standing reason to act. Keepers can also run through the Ichor paymaster for gas.

If a Trawl eventually happens and the collateral no longer covers the debt, the shortfall comes from that Market's Abyss Reserve. What the reserve cannot cover is written off across that Market's lenders only. Keeper availability is a real risk. See Trawl and Risks.

What happens to lenders if a Trawl leaves bad debt?

The Market requests the shortfall from its own Abyss Reserve, a HYPE first-loss fund. If the reserve covers it, lenders lose nothing. If it does not, the remainder is written off across that Market's lenders. Lenders in other Markets are never affected. See Abyss Reserve.

Can I borrow against an unlisted token?

Only tokens with a Market can be borrowed against, but anyone can create one. Market creation is permissionless: lock 100,000 $BYTHOS for 90 days through MarketFactory, and the lock is returned after. The token needs a pool paired with WHYPE, and on mainnet in Phase 0 its LP must be locked in Horkos. A token does not need a HyperCore order book listing: Phase 0 reads Elysium pools.

A new Market cannot be borrowed against for its first 30 minutes. The 30-minute TWAP returns 0 until the Market's oldest stored snapshot is at least 30 minutes old, and the factory records the first snapshot at creation.

On testnet, creators lock tBYTHOS from its faucet instead. See Markets.

Is there a token?

It is planned to launch on montramarkets.xyz. It is used to lock for Market creation, and half of the protocol share is documented to fund a TWAP buyback-and-burn. There is no staking, no governance, no APY promise. See $BYTHOS.

What changes after the ArbOS upgrade?

The upgrade, planned about 4 weeks after Elysium mainnet, adds the EL1Read and EL1Write precompiles. Bythos moves from Phase 0 · pool sounding to Phase 1 · book sounding (after ArbOS upgrade). Sounding v1 adds the HyperCore bid book, so existing Lines see their limits rise, and Trawl sells into HyperCore through intents first. On testnet, SoundingV1 is a stub that reverts with NotYetAvailable(). See Phases and roadmap.

Where do I follow announcements?

Only the X account @BythosFi. Bythos posts announcements nowhere else.