Wallets linked to Justin Sun collected $33 million in LIT, pushing his stake above 5% of circulating supply after Lighter’s token launch.
Summary
- Wallets linked to Justin Sun acquired approximately $33 million worth of LIT after launch.
- The holdings now represent approximately 5.32% of the circulating LIT supply.
- The accumulation appears to be related to Lighter’s liquidity program and not the airdrop farming.
A cluster of wallets linked to Justin Sun has quietly built a significant position in Lighter’s newly launched LIT token.
Data from the chain suggests the purchases were related to providing liquidity rather than airdrop farming.
Wallet activity indicates structured LIT accumulation
According to an analysis by on-chain researcher MLM on January 1, four wallets associated with Justin Sun each received 1.6 million LIT shortly after generating tokens, amounting to approximately 6.4 million LIT, valued at around $17 million at the time.
The wallets were funded between 34 and 50 minutes after Lighter’s airdrop allocation form closed, with no evidence that they had participated in previous points farming.
Further activity shows that Sun has poured nearly $200 million into Lighter’s Liquidity Provider Program. He later withdrew approximately $38 million, using approximately $33 million of that amount to purchase another LIT 13.25 million on the market.
In total, the wallets now contain 14.89 million LIT, worth approximately $39.8 million, giving Sun approximately 5.32% of the circulating supply and 1.33% of the total supply. This leaves approximately $5.5 million in cash balances associated with the same cluster.
The data also suggests that similar arrangements may exist for other large LLP participants. One wallet that had deposited $50 million USDC into the program about a month earlier received 874,875 LIT, although attribution in that case is less certain due to indirect transfers.
RELIEVES under pressure after an air drop
LIT was launched in December. 30 as the native token of Lighter, a high-quality DEX for perpetual futures built as an Ethereum (ETH) zk rollup. The token debuted with a 25% airdrop for early users and liquidity providers, immediately bringing its circulating supply to approximately 250 million tokens.
Tokenomics splits the offering equally between insiders and the ecosystem, with 24% going to investors and 26% to the team. Both parties are subject to a one-year cliff and three-year straight-line vesting. LIT captures value through fee recycling, redemptions, staking, management, and access to advanced features.
The ecosystem and insiders divide the supply equally. Investors own 24% and the team owns 26%, and both allocations are locked in for a year before vesting on a straight-line basis over the next three years. LIT will extract value from the protocol through mechanisms such as fee recycling, buybacks, staking, governance and access to higher level features.
Since launch, LIT has been under pressure due to liquidity withdrawals and post-airdrop profit taking, which is common for new tokens with wide distributions. The token debuted at around $3.40 during initial trading, but quickly experienced volatility, falling around 30% to around $2.45-$2.80 soon after.
With $3.7 billion in 30-day volume and approximately $101 million in annualized costs, Lighter continues to report strong usage statistics despite volatility. The long-term prospects depend on the adoption, implementation of revenue sharing, and growth of the DeFi perp market.
