Lighter Trading Platform Sees $250 Million Withdrawn Within 24 Hours After LIT Token Airdrop
Approximately $250 million was withdrawn from Lighter following its $675 million LIT token airdrop. According to DeFiLlama, these withdrawals represent about 20% of Lighter's total value locked (TVL) of $1.4 billion. On-chain data from Bubblemaps reports around $250 million in withdrawals, including approximately $201.9 million on Ethereum and $52.2 million on Arbitrum.
Nicolas Vaiman, CEO of Bubblemaps, explained that such post-airdrop outflows are not uncommon as users often rebalance hedging positions and move capital to new farming opportunities. He cited similar outflows after the launches of Hyperliquid and Aster, anticipating that this pattern will repeat with other airdrops like PERP DEX or Paradex/Extended.
Natalie Newson, a senior blockchain security researcher at CertiK, noted that large post-token generation event (TGE) withdrawals are commonly driven by airdrop farmers and early participants exiting. This phenomenon has been observed across various token launches, where limited visibility into token distributions enables insiders to capture outsized gains shortly after launch.
In terms of trading activity, LIT's volume ranged from $8 billion to $15 billion throughout November but recently declined to as low as $2 billion. Correspondingly, the LIT price has dropped about 23% since December 30, falling from $3.37 to around $2.57.
