$675M Lighter Airdrop Becomes 10th Largest in Crypto History

Lighter, a decentralized exchange (DEX) that offers perpetual futures trading, carried out one of the biggest token giveaways in crypto history, even as critics continued to question how the project split its token supply.

Lighter airdropped a total of $675 million worth of Lighter Infrastructure Tokens (LIT) to early participants on Tuesday, according to blockchain data visualization platform Bubblemaps. “$675M airdropped to early participants. $30M withdrawn from Lighter (only),” wrote Bubblemaps in a Tuesday X post.

The $675 million total makes the Lighter airdrop the 10th largest airdrop by US dollar value in cryptocurrency history, according to crypto data aggregator CoinGecko.

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The Lighter airdrop surpassed 1inch Network’s $671 million airdrop for the 10th place, but remained behind LooksRare’s $712 million airdrop from 2022.

However, the $675 million pales in comparison to the $6.43 billion of value distributed through the Uniswap airdrop in 2020, the largest in the industry to date. 

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Holders stay put after token generation event

Some of Lighter’s earliest adopters, such as pseudonymous crypto investor Didi, reported receiving an over six-figure airdrop from the DEX.

As of Wednesday, about 75% of the airdrop recipients were holding the tokens, while 7% of recipients had bought more LIT tokens on the open market, signaling confidence in the long-awaited DEX token, according to data shared by blockchain sleuth Arndxt in an X post.

Still, investors have voiced concerns over Lighter’s tokenomics, as 50% of LIT’s supply is reserved for the ecosystem, while the remaining 50% was allocated to the team and investors, with a one-year cliff and a multi-year vesting schedule.

Some community members pointed out that the 50% team allocation was excessively high for a DeFi project, while others criticized the tokenomics for resembling the model presented by one of its main rivals, Hyperliquid.

The LIT token stood at a $678 million market capitalization as of 11:20 am UTC, trading above $2.71, according to crypto intelligence platform Nansen.

However, traders buying at the current price levels may only benefit from a “short-term trade,” as a long-term market opportunity would require significantly more trading volume and “user retention,” wrote crypto investor Casa, in a Tuesday X post.

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