Key Notes
Lighter airdropped $675 million in Lighter Infrastructure Tokens (LIT) to early participants.
Currently, 75% of airdrop recipients are still holding onto their LIT.
Despite the success, some entities have criticized the tokenomics of the LIT crypto.
The cryptocurrency industry has seen one of its biggest transactions as Lighter airdropped $675 million in Lighter Infrastructure Tokens (LIT).
The recipients were early participants in the decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol. The data shared on X by the blockchain data visualization platform Bubblemaps suggests that approximately 75% of recipients are still holding the altcoin.
Lighter Sees Investors’ Confidence in LIT
On December 30, Lighter, a DEX that’s known to offer perpetual futures trading, did a giveaway of $675 million worth of LIT to its early participants.
One of these beneficiaries, who is a pseudonymous crypto investor, confirmed that they received over a six-figure airdrop from the DEX.
Day 395: Received a 6 fig airdrop from @Lighter_xyz
Congrats to everyone who didn’t fade this one.$LIT is currently valuing 1 point around ~$54, well below OTC prices, but still an excellent outcome.
Very happy with how this played out and especially glad I hedged a solid… pic.twitter.com/5obbXfMLtU
— Didi (@DidiTrading) December 30, 2025
So far, about 75% of the recipients are still holding the tokens, and another 7% have increased their holdings by buying more LIT tokens on the open market.
This is a strong signal of confidence in the long-awaited DEX token. In an X post, Bubblemaps noted that $30 million has been withdrawn from Lighter.
$LIT just went live
• $675M airdropped to early participants
• $30M withdrawn from Lighter (only)gud tech pic.twitter.com/WeszphP8G1
— Bubblemaps (@bubblemaps) December 30, 2025
This is one of the biggest token giveaways in crypto history. It was even bigger than 1inch Network’s $671 million airdrop, but still behind LooksRare’s $712 million airdrop from 2022.
The $675 million airdrop is still small compared to the $6.43 billion of value distributed through the Uniswap airdrop in 2020, which is still the largest in the industry to date.
Crypto data aggregator CoinGecko claimed that the Lighter airdrop has now become the 10th largest airdrop by US dollar value in all of crypto history.
Lighter Tokenomics Calls for Attention
Several critics questioned how the project split its token supply. 50% of LIT’s supply has been reserved for the ecosystem, while the remaining 50% was allocated to the team and investors.
It is worth noting that there is a one-year cliff and a multi-year vesting schedule on these allocations.
Certain entities are saying that the tokenomics resembles the model presented by Hyperliquid , one of its main rivals.
Related article: Polymarket Token Speculations: CMO Confirms Incoming POLY Airdrop
Some other people believe that the 50% team allocation was excessively high for a DeFi project.
Apart from this LIT giveaway, one of the other airdrops that the crypto industry saw this year was from President Donald Trump-backed World Liberty Financial.
Last October, it announced an airdrop of 8.4 million WLFI tokens worth $1.2 billion, rewarding early participants in its USD1 Points Program.
