ARC fee rate on Lighter soars abnormally to an annualized 2100%, a whale heavily opens long positions to lure in short sellers

BlockBeats News, on February 25, according to on-chain analysis published by @Route2FI, a certain whale is currently holding a total long position worth $24 million in ARC on the Perp DEX Lighter, and is increasing the position by $360,000 per hour through TWAP (Time-Weighted Average Price), continuously injecting funds to drive the long side. At present, this whale has already made a profit of $5 million. The current annualized funding rate for ARC contract markets on Lighter has soared to 2100%, which means that short sellers can receive about 5.7% funding fee income per day, and this will attract more shorts to enter, intensifying the long-short battle.

Route2FI stated that this whale's behavior is similar to the JellyJelly price manipulation incident on Hyperliquid. In March 2025, a whale trader on Hyperliquid opened a large short position on JELLY perpetual contracts while simultaneously pumping the spot price through other accounts and on-chain, causing short traders to be liquidated. After settlement, Hyperliquid’s liquidity pool HLP suffered losses, and the Hyperliquid team urgently delisted the contract through a governance vote and forcibly settled it at an extremely low price.

Route2FI further analyzed that the whale's intention is still unclear. Hyperliquid’s HLP absorbs liquidated positions, but Lighter’s LLP does not absorb such large positions. If the position is too large or the risk is too high, it will directly trigger the ADL (Auto-Deleveraging) mechanism. Therefore, the whale’s attempt to replicate the JellyJelly incident strategy may not succeed.