Lighter’s $675M airdrop ranks 10th, faces 50% split criticism

Lighter, a decentralized exchange focused on perpetual futures, distributed $675 million worth of Lighter Infrastructure Tokens (LIT) in an airdrop on Tuesday. The event ranks as the 10th largest token giveaway by dollar value and drew scrutiny of the project’s token split, which assigns 50% of supply to the team and investors under a one-year cliff and multi-year vesting.

On-chain activity showed notable flows around the launch. Blockchain data platform Bubblemaps highlighted early movements: “$675M airdropped to early participants. $30M withdrawn from Lighter (only).”

Some early users reported large allocations. A pseudonymous investor known as Didi disclosed a six-figure airdrop. Holding behavior in the first day skewed to retention, with about 75% of recipients keeping their tokens and roughly 7% buying more on the open market, based on figures shared by a blockchain analyst.

The tokenomics split prompted debate among community members. Half of the total LIT supply is earmarked for the ecosystem, and the other half goes to the team and investors, subject to a one-year cliff and a multi-year vesting schedule. Some users questioned whether the team share is high for a DeFi project and compared the model to rival Hyperliquid.

The $675 million total places Lighter among the largest distributions to date. Uniswap’s 2020 airdrop remains the biggest at about $6.43 billion. The new sum edges past 1inch Network’s roughly $671 million allocation.