Original ｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Data from the prediction platform Polymarket shows that the expected probability of "Lighter will airdrop on December 29" has sharply declined from 87% four days ago to 25%, nearly halving.
Although a drop in probability does not directly equate to the cancellation of the airdrop, market sentiment has clearly turned cold. As of the time of writing, Lighter has yet to announce a detailed token economic model, which does not create an atmosphere conducive to a TGE and airdrop. Interestingly, the Lighter Staging page now shows LIT spot trading, but no one knows how long this testing will last. (Odaily Note: Staging refers to a pre-release environment, which is generally seen as the final rehearsal before a product officially goes live, situated between the testing environment and production.)
It is important to note that the settlement for the airdrop timing on Polymarket is based on Eastern Standard Time, so for investors in the GMT+8 timezone, for "Lighter will airdrop on December 29" to settle as "no," Lighter must not airdrop before 1:00 PM on December 30. Investors in other time zones should convert the time accordingly.
Despite Lighter's market lead Pilla.eth having previously stated in an AMA that both the TGE and airdrop will occur in 2025, the panic has led to a decline in the probability of "Lighter will airdrop before December 31, 2025" on Polymarket from 94% to 64%. The players betting "No" have provided high praise for their analysis, but there is little reasonable analysis or insider information, mostly emotional betting or nitpicking:
- "It has been confirmed that the airdrop will occur in 2026."
- "I still can't understand why these fools didn't mention TGE at all, and the probability reached 94%. This was the worst AMA of my life, wasted 45 minutes listening to a bunch of nonsense, no useful information at all."
- "TGE does not equal airdrop; they are not the same thing. There are many examples of this; first, understand the rules clearly."
- "In the determination rules, locked tokens or non-tradable tokens cannot be a condition for 'Yes.' Even if the project team releases an airdrop query and shows your allocation, as long as the tokens cannot be freely traded on the market, the conclusion is 'No.'"
Of course, in addition to the unclear airdrop date, Lighter also faces concerns about anti-witch scrutiny and valuation traps, with multiple clouds hanging over it. Coinciding with the year-end market cooling, any movement from a project will attract extra attention from the community—Lighter's current movements can be described as "timely."
The Most Severe Anti-Witch Measures of 2025
Lighter has hitched its wagon to two of the hottest narratives in 2025 (Prep DEX and RWA), leading investors to be quite optimistic about it. In early December, news spread that Lighter would have its TGE and airdrop within 2025, further boosting investor enthusiasm, with some major token holders even "popping champagne" on social media.
Major Lighter token holders released their acceptance speeches in advance.
But as the saying goes, "What is kept secret succeeds; what is spoken of fails." Many blame the severe anti-witch screening initiated by Lighter on these boastful users (though this may not be the case).
On December 23, Lighter announced in its official Discord that it would begin a massive anti-witch screening, removing witch addresses, self-trading, and points obtained through wash trading, but these reduced points (including those already removed) would be redistributed to the community.
The community erupted; after Lighter initiated the anti-witch screening, many studio account points were deducted, with one blogger claiming that Lighter's anti-witch measures were extremely severe, with studio accounts being checked at a rate of 70-90%, and ordinary players were not spared, leading to widespread lamentation on social media.
Some even compared Lighter to LayerZero in 2025, which checked over 800,000 wallet addresses before its airdrop in 2024. While the number of witch addresses for Lighter may not be as high as LayerZero's, the severity may be comparable.
Such harsh anti-witch actions undoubtedly place Lighter at odds with the community.
According to some users affected by the witch hunt, Lighter's reason for labeling them as witches was simply "abnormal trading," with no further explanation provided. The anti-witch rules are also not publicly transparent, meaning users do not even know how they "died."
However, in the face of community skepticism, Lighter's founder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski remains confident in this rather arbitrary anti-witch screening and stated that the anti-witch algorithm would not be made public. His explanation was that he did not want to be targeted for optimization, and he also mentioned that there is an appeal mechanism for the anti-witch screening, but so far, the number of appeals has been much lower than expected.
Yet some community members do not believe Vladimir's words and think that Lighter's severe anti-witch measures are to protect its own insider trading, and even the off-market point prices may have been secretly inflated by the Lighter team.
After all, the cryptocurrency world has always operated on the principle that the simpler the scheme, the more straightforward the interactions; the more severe the anti-witch measures, the more likely there are hidden agendas. Even competitors in the same space, like Hyperliquid and Aster, did not have the same level of fuss and "stinginess" during their airdrops as Lighter.
The Lighter community currently resembles students anxiously awaiting exam results; every day Lighter stops the anti-witch screening, they endure another day of torment.
Is FDV Overestimated?
With the already sluggish market environment compounded by negative community sentiment, the market has begun to ponder whether Lighter is already overvalued.
On Polymarket, the probability of "Lighter's first-day FDV exceeding $1 billion" has dropped from 90% to 72%, and the probability of "Lighter's first-day FDV exceeding $2 billion" has also fallen from 87% to 68%. This indicates that market confidence in Lighter's valuation is declining.
Referring to the first-day market caps of the other two major Prep DEXs (Hyperliquid and Aster), Hyperliquid's FDV was approximately $3.6 billion when it opened on November 29, 2024, while Aster's FDV was about $10.8 billion when it opened on September 17, 2024. According to pre-market data from Binance, Lighter's current pre-market FDV is approximately $3.3 billion, peaking at $4.3 billion.
From this perspective, the valuation of Lighter on Polymarket seems reasonable, but why is market confidence still declining?
One reason is that the selling pressure from the airdrop cannot be ignored, especially in the context of Lighter's extensive anti-witch screening and the community's goodwill being completely eroded; the vast majority of familiar users will sell off as soon as they receive the airdrop. According to the Lighter team, the airdrop ratio may be 25% of the total token supply, and there are no lock-up restrictions, meaning the airdrop sell-off will undoubtedly pose a significant obstacle to Lighter's market cap growth.
Another reason is that for a period after the Lighter token goes live, it will only trade on its own platform and will not actively list on exchanges. The Lighter team has also stated that they have not paid any listing fees to any trading platforms. This means that for a period after launch, Lighter will not fully obtain CEX liquidity, thereby limiting the potential for price increases after the Lighter token goes live.
Nevertheless, there are still large whales maintaining confidence in Lighter. On Hyperliquid, the long and short positions for Lighter are still relatively balanced. Since the pre-market contracts went live, 10 whales with positions exceeding $1 million have entered the market, with both long and short sides having 5 each.
Andy, the founder of The Rollup, also stated that despite the initial token volatility likely leading to a decline in Lighter's open interest (OI) of over 20% and a potential trading volume drop of over 30%, he would still choose to buy if LIT's fully diluted valuation (FDV) is around $2 billion.
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