#ETF与衍生品 The end-of-year token issuance wave, Lighter is really coming 🔥

Just saw someone in Polymarket spend $125,000 to buy YES for Lighter's TGE within the year, and Coinbase also officially announced their token listing roadmap. This pace... it feels like airdrops are very likely to materialize.

But honestly, after comparing and analyzing two projects, my opinion has changed. I used to think Lighter was just a copycat of Hyperliquid, but it’s not even in the same league:

**Transaction fees are a complete knockout** ➜ Retail traders need to reach a trading volume of 500,000 on Hyperliquid to enjoy low fees, while ordinary players (with 10,000-100,000 capital) on Lighter face a much lower overall cost. Zero fees + 300ms latency vs continuous trading fees—it's obvious which is more cost-effective.

**Architectural security blows away** ➜ Hyperliquid is a monolithic application chain, and users’ assets on cross-chain transfers still need to trust third-party bridges, which is really problematic given the black histories of Ronin and Multichain. Lighter chose Ethereum L2, with liquidation on the mainnet, so the risk level is completely different.

**Privacy design is the killer feature** ➜ The on-chain data transparency flaw is a nightmare for large funds, making them easy targets for front-running. Lighter can hide transaction data, which is a basic requirement for institutional funding.

The key issue now is: retention after TGE. Hyperliquid has survived until now because its incentives can organically grow even after the program ends. Can Lighter break the “mining and selling” curse? The airdrop at year-end will be fulfilled, and next year’s trading volume will determine its fate 🎯

In my opinion, this wave might really be more than just another TGE story—if Robinhood + Lighter + Citadel form a successful closed loop, the scale could far surpass any current Perp DEX. But the prerequisite is surviving the liquidity crisis during the airdrop period 👀