Is Lighter stingy or strategic? — Insights from the delayed airdrop saga until the end of 2025

By the end of 2025, on the prediction market Polymarket, the “stinginess” of a certain project was brought to light. It is the “Lighter” project of Preparing DEX. Initially, the predicted probability of the airdrop execution on December 29 was 87%, but it plummeted to 25% in just four days. This was a moment when market participants’ trust was greatly shaken. Could this be due to Lighter’s deliberately limited information disclosure and avoidance of transparency, reflecting a stingy attitude?

Pilla.eth, the marketing lead of Lighter, once stated in an AMA that “TGE and airdrops will be conducted in 2025.” However, as of the time of writing, details of the tokenomics model have not been disclosed, nor has a specific schedule been revealed. This restriction of information seems less like a security measure and more like a stingy information management strategy of the project itself.

Furthermore, interestingly, LIT spot trading can be confirmed on Lighter’s staging page, but the actual testing period has not been clearly specified. Since Polymarket uses Eastern Standard Time (EST), investors in the UTC+8 time zone are left to be confused by the vague timing of “before 13:00 on December 30.” The confusion arising among investors across different time zones symbolizes Lighter’s stingy approach to information disclosure.

Multiple Aspects of Lighter’s Stinginess

Lighter’s stinginess is not limited to information disclosure. This characteristic is prominently reflected across multiple layers of the project.

On December 23, Lighter announced the start of a large-scale witch check on its official Discord. The policy is to remove points earned by wallet addresses, self-trading, and wash trading on exchanges. However, the criteria for removal are extremely vague, and Lighter stubbornly refuses to disclose detailed algorithms. Vladimir Novakovsky, the founder and CEO, explained, “We do not want to be targeted and optimized,” but this precisely signifies a neglect of transparency rooted in stinginess.

While there is a mechanism for community objections, its effectiveness remains unknown. Many users are not even clearly informed why their points were removed.

Another noteworthy aspect is Lighter’s token liquidity strategy. After launch, LIT was initially planned to be traded only within the Lighter platform. The Lighter team has explicitly stated that they are not paying any listing fees to centralized exchanges. This can be interpreted as a stingy attitude toward exchange liquidity. As a result, the potential for LIT’s price to rise immediately after launch is significantly limited.

The same stinginess is observed in the scale of the airdrop. According to the Lighter team, the airdrop will be limited to 25% of the total token supply and will have no lock-up restrictions. Considering the already damaged community trust, many users who receive the airdrop are likely to sell immediately. This stingy supply design burdens the project with selling pressure.

Market Sentiment Cooling: Reading Investor Anxiety from Polymarket Data

Polymarket’s prediction data vividly illustrates a dramatic shift in market psychology.

The predicted probability that Lighter’s FDV will exceed 1 billion dollars on the first day dropped from 90% to 72%, an 18-point decrease. The prediction that FDV will exceed 2 billion dollars on the first day fell from 87% to 68%. This suggests that market confidence in Lighter’s valuation is shaking more than ever before.

Referring to Binance’s pre-market data, Lighter’s current pre-market FDV is approximately 3.3 billion dollars, having peaked at 4.3 billion dollars. This level of FDV is not low in itself. So why does skepticism remain?

One reason is concerns over selling pressure from the airdrop. As witch hunts intensify within the community and trust is eroded, experienced users are likely to sell immediately upon receiving the airdrop. The possibility that 25% of the total token supply could flood the market at once poses a significant obstacle to Lighter’s market cap growth.

A second reason is the lack of liquidity. By refusing to pay listing fees to centralized exchanges and limiting trading to the platform, initial liquidity is extremely restricted. This stingy choice disadvantages the price formation of LIT immediately after launch.

Comparing with LayerZero, Hyperliquid, and Aster: Is Lighter’s Strategy Correct?

Understanding Lighter’s stinginess is more effective when compared with other projects in the same sector.

As of November 29, 2024, Hyperliquid’s FDV was about 3.6 billion dollars, and as of September 17, 2024, Aster’s FDV was about 10.8 billion dollars. Compared to these projects, Lighter’s pre-market FDV of 3.3 billion dollars is not particularly high. It can be considered a moderate valuation.

A more instructive example is LayerZero. LayerZero conducted investigations on over 800,000 wallet addresses before the airdrop and closed many fraudulent accounts. Lighter also conducts strict witch hunts following this example, but its transparency and disclosure stance differ greatly. LayerZero provided explanations about its inspection process, whereas Lighter continues to hide algorithm details stingily.

This stinginess fuels suspicion within the community. Some users have begun to suspect that the point prices in Lighter’s private markets are secretly manipulated within the team. In the crypto world, the more complex the process and the more information is concealed, the greater the skepticism about the results.

Meanwhile, competitors within the sector like Hyperliquid and Aster do not exhibit as stingy an attitude as Lighter. Their execution speed of airdrops and transparency in information disclosure surpass Lighter.

Current Community State: Trials at Checkpoints

The Lighter community currently resembles students awaiting university entrance exam results. Every time a witch hunt is halted, new expectations are born, only to be dashed repeatedly.

Within the community, criticism of Lighter’s stingy information management and strict witch hunts is ongoing. Underlying this is a concern that “if there are so many restrictions and opaqueness, the project’s quality itself might be questionable.”

However, some whales (large investors) continue to trust Lighter. According to Hyperliquid data, among whales holding over 1 million dollars, there are five on the buy side and five on the sell side, indicating a nearly balanced sentiment between bullish and bearish.

Andy, founder of The Rollup, admits that after initial token fluctuations are absorbed, the open interest (OI) of LIT might decrease by over 20%, and trading volume by over 30%, but if the FDV remains around 2 billion dollars, they would still choose to buy.

Conclusion: Is Stinginess a Strategy or the Essence?

What emerges from the situation of Lighter at the end of 2025 is its profound stinginess. Restrictions on information disclosure, non-disclosure of witch-hunting algorithms, limited liquidity strategies—all symbolize Lighter’s stingy decision-making.

The market clearly reacts to this stinginess. As indicated by Polymarket’s predicted probabilities, investor trust is rapidly declining. The tendency of FDV valuation to settle in the 3-billion-dollar range also reflects market caution.

Whether Lighter’s stinginess is a long-term strategy or merely a lack of transparency will become clear through future project operations. However, at this stage, it is certain that this stingy attitude is eroding community trust and limiting the project’s growth potential.