Decentralized Perpetual Contract Exchange Lighter completes a total airdrop of $675 million, but token distribution plans have sparked polarized community opinions. The protocol stands out with zero fees and ZK technology but faces questions about data authenticity and system stability, making user retention in the post-airdrop era a key challenge.
(Background: Lighter platform token $LIT officially launched! The airdrop scale reached $675 million, and a Taiwanese high school student made $6 million from a single trade)
(Additional background: Lighter airdrops $LIT! Registering a US company will funnel 100% of revenue back into the token)

Table of Contents

• Airdrop reactions are polarized, token distribution sparks controversy
• Top-tier capital bets on Harvard genius to build Lighter
• ZK empowers Lighter to achieve 15K+ TPS, with verifiability
• Zero-fee model reshapes protocol user acquisition logic
• OI/Vol ratio remains around 0.2 long-term, post-airdrop data may “significantly water down”

The last airdrop of the year concluded last night, December 30(. Perp DEX )Decentralized Perpetual Contract Exchange( Lighter announced the completion of its airdrop, distributing a total of $675 million to early participants, bringing a touch of warmth to the cold market by the end of 2025.

Although the winter market is somewhat bleak, competition in the Perp DEX arena over liquidity and trading experience is intensifying. The industry is witnessing the gradual replacement of early AMMs )Automated Market Makers( with high-performance centralized limit order books )CLOB(. Built on zk-rollup, Lighter quickly emerged with its zero-fee strategy and customized ZK circuits, aiming to redefine on-chain derivatives trading standards.

Historically, airdrops are never perfect, and Lighter undoubtedly faces the common issues of other airdrop projects: community dissatisfaction and user retention in the post-airdrop era.

) Airdrop reactions are polarized, token distribution sparks controversy

Lighter completed its TGE yesterday, with the protocol token $LIT showing volatile performance early on. In pre-market trading on several centralized exchanges, $LIT briefly hit a high of $3.9. After the official TGE, the price surged to $7.8 in a short period, then retreated and stabilized between $2.6 and $3.

According to Bubblemaps monitoring, the total amount airdropped to early participants on the first day of $LIT’s listing reached $675 million. Since the airdrop, approximately $30 million has flowed out of Lighter.

Lighter’s airdrop was relatively generous, but community opinions are sharply divided. Supporters argue that the initial airdrop accounts for 25% of the total supply, roughly $690 million directly distributed to Season 1 and Season 2 token holders, with no lock-up restrictions, contrasting sharply with lower token allocations in many other projects’ TGE; opponents believe that the conversion rate for Season 1 and Season 2 points is about 20 to 28 $LIT$ per point. For high-frequency traders, this is roughly break-even with their paid fees, failing to deliver the expected “big gains.”

The biggest controversy in this TGE lies in Lighter’s tokenomics. The total supply is 1 billion tokens, with 50% allocated to the ecosystem and 50% to the team and investors, with a 3-year linear unlock. This plan has been criticized as “team-dominated”: while investor lock-ups are strict, the overall proportion is high, potentially diluting community benefits. The 25% unlocked airdrop tokens may create short-term selling pressure, while the 50% locked portion could lead to long-term selling pressure, hindering the healthy growth of $LIT$'s market cap.

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From a valuation perspective, Lighter’s pricing directly benchmarks against Hyperliquid and Aster. Although its trading volume once surpassed these competitors, doubts remain about its valuation reasonableness.

CoinGecko data shows $LIT$'s current market cap is about $680 million, with FDV )Fully Diluted Valuation( exceeding $2.7 billion. A week ago, Polymarket’s forecast indicated an 83% probability that “Lighter’s market cap will exceed $2 billion on its first day.”

Lighter CEO Vladimir Novakovski stated in a podcast interview: “Tokens won’t skyrocket immediately after launch; the realistic expectation is to start from a relatively healthy position.” The founder of The Rollup, Andy, also tweeted: “If $LIT$'s FDV is around $2 billion, I would consider buying.”

Overall, Lighter’s TGE performance was basically in line with expectations, with no surprises. Coupled with the overall market downturn, community response to the protocol remains lukewarm.

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) Top-tier capital bets on Harvard genius to build Lighter

Lighter’s story begins with its founder Vladimir Novakovski, a quintessential “kid from a good family” combined with Wall Street elite. He entered Harvard at 16 and graduated early, then was personally recruited by Ken Griffin, founder of the global market-making giant Citadel. This experience at a top quantitative fund gave him deep insights into the microstructure of traditional financial markets and liquidity management.

However, this genius’s ambitions did not stop at Wall Street. He successfully founded an AI social platform, Lunchclub, valued over hundreds of millions of dollars in Web2. In 2023, he keenly identified a gap in on-chain financial infrastructure, leading 80% of his team to pivot entirely into crypto, dedicating full effort to Lighter’s development.

“We invested in Lighter mainly because of Vladimir and his team’s engineering capabilities,” said Joey Krug, partner at top Wall Street VC Founders Fund. “In a highly complex technical race, top talent density is the main moat.”

In November 2025, Lighter announced a $68 million funding round, with a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion.

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Among them, the participation of well-known broker Robinhood may signal an important message: Traditional financial giants are seeking infrastructure capable of handling institutional-level trading volume for Perp DEXs. This not only brings capital to Lighter but also introduces potential institutional users from traditional finance.

) ZK empowers Lighter to achieve 15K+ TPS, with verifiability

2025 marks a watershed year for the Perp DEX track. While early protocols like dYdX and GMX proved the feasibility of on-chain derivatives trading, they have yet to match centralized exchanges (CEX) in terms of speed, slippage control, oracle latency, and liquidity depth. Lighter, by adopting CLOB models and high-performance Layer 2 architecture, achieves sub-second transaction times and higher capital efficiency.

The core logic behind this evolution is verification equals trust. Lighter does not require users to trust the matching engine but generates cryptographic proofs for each order match, risk check, and liquidation via customized ZK circuits. This architecture ensures that even if the sequencer attempts malicious behavior or is attacked, the underlying Ethereum mainnet contracts can safeguard assets.

Lighter’s technical moat is built on a seemingly paradoxical combination: decentralized trust ###ZK( and centralized efficiency )CLOB(. Its design emphasizes not only high performance but also transparency and non-custodianship, giving it a strong “Ethereum-native” narrative.

Unlike many general-purpose ZK VM protocols, Lighter chose a more challenging path: custom ZK circuits )zkLighter( for transaction logic. This allows the protocol to generate proofs with extremely high efficiency, reaching 15,000+ TPS )transactions per second( and sub-10-millisecond soft finality, meeting the demands of high-frequency traders.

Notably, Lighter’s underlying data structure uses a “super-tree” architecture to ensure that even under high concurrency, each order’s execution price is optimal at that moment.

To prevent extreme risks like sequencer offline or denial-of-service, Lighter has designed an “escape pod” mode. Since all account balances and positions are published as Blob data on Ethereum, users can generate their own account value proofs from public data history and withdraw funds directly on the mainnet without relying on the sequencer’s authorization. This mechanism enhances censorship resistance and asset sovereignty, surpassing self-built L1-based Perp DEX protocols.

) Zero-fee model reshapes protocol user acquisition

Lighter’s ability to attract high-density capital and users hinges not only on high performance and verifiability but also on three innovative aspects: fee structure, capital efficiency, and liquidation logic.

In a landscape where most Perp DEXs rely on trading fees for revenue, Lighter throws a “zero trading fee” bomb into the market.

The protocol designs a clever dual-layer account model to balance commercial sustainability.

• Retail accounts (Standard): No maker or taker fees for ordinary users. Although this introduces a slight delay of about 300ms, it is highly attractive to most non-high-frequency users.
• Premium accounts ###Premium(: For institutions and high-frequency traders, offering zero-latency channels but charging very low fees )Maker 0.002%, Taker 0.02%(.

Currently, Lighter’s revenue mainly comes from premium account fees and liquidation fees, with daily income around $200,000, preliminarily validating its user acquisition model.

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However, due to market downturns, Lighter’s revenue has declined over the past week. The token airdrop has been realized, but the protocol’s actual revenue-generating ability remains to be seen.

If zero fees are the hook for attracting users, then the universal cross-margin system )UCM( is the killer for retaining professional capital.

Traditional Perp DEXs usually require users to deposit stablecoins like USDC as collateral, which is less capital efficient. Lighter introduces the UCM system, allowing traders to directly use interest-bearing assets stored on Ethereum L1 )such as stETH, LP tokens, or even Aave deposits( as collateral for L2 leveraged trading.

The cleverness of this design lies in the fact that users’ collateral assets do not need to be cross-chain transferred but are mapped to L2 via ZK proofs. This means users can earn L1 staking yields while opening positions on L2.

In case of liquidation, the system generates a cryptographic proof submitted to the L1 contract, automatically deducting the corresponding assets. This “assets stay put, credit extended” mode greatly improves capital efficiency and eliminates the difficult choice between earning assets and trading funds.

Liquidation mechanisms have always been a contentious point in Perp DEXs. Lighter ensures that liquidation actions are fully verifiable through ZK circuits, reducing the risk of malicious platform behavior or forced liquidations.

Additionally, Lighter has launched risk-tiered liquidity pools:

• LLP )Lighter Liquidity Provider(: The main protocol pool, acting as counterparty and liquidation executor. It profits from losers and captures funding rates and liquidation fees. Currently, LLP’s annualized yield remains around 30%.
• XLP )Experimental Liquidity Provider(: Designed for experimental assets )such as pre-market tokens, RWA, and low-liquidity altcoins(. XLP does not participate in forced liquidations, and its risk exposure is isolated from the main protocol, suitable for higher-risk liquidity providers.

) OI/Vol ratio remains around 0.2 long-term, post-airdrop data may “significantly water down”

The rapidly advancing Lighter is not without shadows.

The exaggerated OI/Vol (Open Interest/Volume) ratio has triggered widespread skepticism. Although recent ratios have rebounded, Lighter has long maintained a ratio around 0.2, meaning that on average, each $1 of open interest is traded about 5 times within 24 hours, significantly deviating from a healthy organic position ###OI/Vol<0.33(, showing clear wash trading characteristics.

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This phenomenon mainly stems from Lighter’s aggressive point incentive program. Although the protocol employs measures like invitation code scarcity and weighted position duration for defense, the token generation event (TGE) has ended, and the high-frequency trading activity will influence Lighter’s true market share.

Frequent system outages of Lighter also reveal its stability issues. On October 9, the protocol experienced a 4.5-hour outage. On December 30, Lighter again faced a proof generator stall preventing users from withdrawing funds normally. For a derivatives platform handling billions of dollars, stability is life.

Lighter’s emergence marks a new stage in Perp DEX evolution: from decentralization to verifiable high performance. By leveraging Ethereum mainnet security and ZK technology, it addresses trust issues and enters the Perp DEX battlefield with zero fees.

However, competition in the Perp DEX space is no longer solely about technology; liquidity, community ecosystem, and product quality are now comprehensive battlegrounds. Whether Lighter can grow from a tech dark horse into a leading player depends on its ability to continuously attract and retain genuine trading demand in the post-airdrop era.

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