Lighter, a decentralized trade (DEX) that provides perpetual futures buying and selling, carried out one of many greatest token giveaways in crypto historical past, at the same time as critics continued to query how the venture cut up its token provide.
Lighter airdropped a complete of $675 million value of Lighter Infrastructure Tokens (LIT) to early contributors on Tuesday, in line with blockchain information visualization platform Bubblemaps. “$675M airdropped to early contributors. $30M withdrawn from Lighter (solely),” wrote Bubblemaps in a Tuesday X submit.
The $675 million complete makes the Lighter airdrop the tenth largest airdrop by US greenback worth in cryptocurrency historical past, in line with crypto information aggregator CoinGecko.
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The Lighter airdrop surpassed 1inch Community’s $671 million airdrop for the tenth place, however remained behind LooksRare’s $712 million airdrop from 2022.
Nevertheless, the $675 million pales compared to the $6.43 billion of worth distributed via the Uniswap airdrop in 2020, the most important within the business up to now.
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Holders keep put after token technology occasion
A few of Lighter’s earliest adopters, equivalent to pseudonymous crypto investor Didi, reported receiving an over six-figure airdrop from the DEX.
As of Wednesday, about 75% of the airdrop recipients have been holding the tokens, whereas 7% of recipients had purchased extra LIT tokens on the open market, signaling confidence within the long-awaited DEX token, in line with information shared by blockchain sleuth Arndxt in an X submit.
Nonetheless, buyers have voiced issues over Lighter’s tokenomics, as 50% of LIT’s provide is reserved for the ecosystem, whereas the remaining 50% was allotted to the staff and buyers, with a one-year cliff and a multi-year vesting schedule.
Some neighborhood members identified that the 50% staff allocation was excessively excessive for a DeFi venture, whereas others criticized the tokenomics for resembling the mannequin introduced by certainly one of its essential rivals, Hyperliquid.
The LIT token stood at a $678 million market capitalization as of 11:20 am UTC, buying and selling above $2.71, in line with crypto intelligence platform Nansen.
Nevertheless, merchants shopping for on the present worth ranges might solely profit from a “short-term commerce,” as a long-term market alternative would require considerably extra buying and selling quantity and “consumer retention,” wrote crypto investor Casa, in a Tuesday X submit.
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