Lighter TGE Hot Topic: Disagreements Arise Over TGE Timing and Long-term Positioning

BlockBeats News, December 15, Lighter has sparked intense discussion in the crypto community regarding its TGE (Token Generation Event) timing, potential relationship with a certain exchange, and its long-term competitiveness compared to Hyperliquid, with market opinions clearly divided.

On one hand, the bullish camp believes that going long on LIGHTER / LIT essentially means betting that Lighter can form deep synergy with a certain exchange, Robinhood, and mainstream VCs and liquidity funds, thereby gaining compliance and channel advantages. LIGHTER has already been included in the development roadmap of a certain exchange. In addition, the CEO has previously publicly mentioned a "December TGE," and the token contract deployment timing has entered the common airdrop window, all of which reinforce the market expectation of a "year-end TGE + airdrop."

On the other hand, skepticism is equally strong. Some traders, after comparing LIGHTER and HYPE, pointed out that the long logic of the two is completely different: Hyperliquid is seen as a long-term narrative of building a complete on-chain financial ecosystem outside the existing regulatory framework; Lighter, on the other hand, is more like a "cheaper, more user-friendly trading product," but lacks ecosystem-level expansion space such as staking, Gas Token, and LaaS, and its potential TAM (Total Addressable Market) is considered significantly smaller.

Some community members also questioned how Lighter, while being closed-source, could obtain listing and custody support from a certain exchange, while HYPE has been unable to achieve this for a long time. The standards and logic behind this difference have sparked discussion. The pessimistic view holds that after Lighter's TGE and airdrop end, the withdrawal of incentive funds may lead to a decline in trading volume and metrics. If Hyperliquid launches a new round of incentives (such as S3) at that time, a large amount of wash trading funds may flow back to Hyperliquid and HIP-3 DEX, forcing Lighter to start a new season of incentives to maintain its competitive position.

Currently, most opinions still lean towards a high probability of Lighter's airdrop happening within the year, for reasons including the start of Sybil address cleanup and abnormal trading signals in prediction markets.