What's Driving Token Prices? August 26, 2026

ZRO (+31%) - Yesterday, interoperability protocol LayerZero announced the upcoming launch of ATLAS. ATLAS (which stands for Aggregated Trading Liquidity and Settlement) is a trading infrastructure built on Zero, LayerZero’s upcoming Layer-1. ATLAS is designed for trading venues, either crypto-native or traditional finance, to plug into and use for matching, clearing, settlement, and risk. As the infrastructure component, ATLAS will take 75% of the remaining fees to buy and burn ZRO tokens. Trading venues can also opt to hold and stake ZRO for higher fee-share tiers. LayerZero does not plan to create its own front-end for ATLAS, as they do not want to compete with trading venues but instead offer them a neutral infrastructure component. ATLAS is due to launch when the Zero mainnet goes live later this year.
ZEC (+42%) - Yesterday, asset manager Grayscale launched an ETF for Zcash, sending the privacy coin higher. Zcash has been a big outperformer in 2026, with a resurgence of the privacy narrative coupled with anti-Bitcoin sentiment as institutional investors have saturated the market. ZEC was up over 1000% in the past year and 55% YTD in a year when a majority of the crypto market is down. The ETF launch will allow investors to purchase ZEC exposure through their brokerage accounts without needing to custody the asset or use crypto-native exchanges. ZEC reacted well, trading up 42% this week.
KNTQ (+68%) - Kinetiq, a liquid staking and trading venue on Hyperliquid’s chain, announced the launch of Elysium (its Layer-2) yesterday. While Hyperliquid is best known for its perpetual futures exchange, it also operates a Layer-1 protocol that its exchange and other products run on. Kinetiq initially launched as a liquid staking protocol for HYPE but has since expanded to operate Markets.xyz, a perps exchange for equities, indices, commodities, currencies, and pre-IPO assets. Kinetiq claims that HyperEVM (the Layer-1) is less than ideal for traders and builders with limitations on its throughput and high complexity. The proposed L2, Elysium, would work to solve these issues, using HYPE as the native gas token and creating a token launch platform. The Kinetiq team claims that unlike other L2s, which siphon value and fees away from the L1s they are built on top of, its L2 would increase overall activity, which would flow back to Hyperliquid. Fees generated on Elysium will be split 25% to builders, 25% to the Kinetiq treasury for operations, and 50% to KNTQ buybacks.

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