Lighter Team Under Fire After Alleged $7.18M LIT Token Dump Post-Airdrop

New data indicates that wallets associated with Lighter might have traded millions of dollars in tokens immediately after its airdrop.

Data Flags Large Post-Airdrop Sales from Lighter

A blockchain researcher spotted that one entity had deposited around $5 million in USDC into the platform’s liquidity pool some nine months ago. The money was divided among five wallets that were later sent a total of 9,999,999.6 tokens resulting from an airdrop.

At the listing price, that would be $26 million. That will make up nearly 1% of the total supply and almost 4% of the circulating supply. This does not account for the extra yield made during this time.

Approximately 2.76 million tokens worth $7.18 million have been sold into the open market since the TGE.

This happened less than a week after Lighter unveiled the release of its very own LIT Token, distributing 25% of the tokens in an airdrop for early users, converting 12.5 million points earned by users to tokens, making it one of the biggest airdrops in the history of DeFi.

A blockchain researcher named ZachXBT made a sarcastic comment on X, suggesting there might be insider trading happening. Another analyst got straight to the point and questioned whether team accounts sold millions in LIT Token. He also warned that if the process of these sales isn’t clear, long-term holders could end up getting hurt.

$250M Withdrawn as Liquidity Exits Platform

Bubblemaps reported that Lighter’s trading platform saw about $250 million in withdrawals within the first 24 hours after the airdrop. event. About $201.9 million left the Ethereum blockchain, including $ 52.2 million on the Arbitrum chain. Bubblemaps asked whether the yield farmers are exiting quickly after relocking their allocation.

Nicolas Vaiman, the CEO of Bubblemaps said the withdrawals represented about 20% of the TVL of our platform, which has a TVL of $1.4 billion. This kind of phenomenon has also been noted after the launch of other platforms like Hyperliquid and Aster.

Data for the market shows increased uncertainty. The volume of trades for the new altcoin has significantly fallen from $15 billion in November to $3 billion. The price of the LIT token has also dropped by 30%, from $3.35 in late December to $2.47.