LIT, the newly launched token of decentralized perpetuals exchange Lighter, fell sharply in pre-market trading on Tuesday as its highly anticipated airdrop distribution went live, prompting heavy selling from early receivers and leveraged traders.
The token initially climbed to a post-launch high of $4.04 shortly after trading began, before reversing and falling to around $2.62, a drop of around 22.2%.
That price also marked LIT’s lowest level since launch, reflecting continued downward pressure as the market absorbed the large token distribution.
LIT sees heavy trading as selling exceeds early accumulation
However, despite this excessive price drop, trading volume has increased over the past 24 hours as LIT experienced 13.43 million in trading volume, which is almost three times as much as the day before.
The increased volume was indicative of greater market involvement, which was primarily due to volatility, short-term speculation and unwinding of positions, rather than long-term accumulation.
LIT is trading down almost 35% from its peak, and the token is now squarely in a post-launch correction period while price discovery is still ongoing.
Data about the chain that was based on the airdrop as long as Additional information on selling pressure and the analysis of 10,000 wallets conducted just after the distribution showed that approximately 198.86 million LIT tokens were initially received by participants.
The existing balances in all these wallets amount to approximately LIT 183.29 million, meaning that a significant portion of the air-dropped supply has already declined.
Only 7.77% of wallets increased their holdings, while 45.88% reduced their balances and 46.35% made no changes, indicating that selling activity exceeded accumulation.
In absolute terms, approximately 150.34 million LIT, or roughly 75.6% of the airdropped tokens, remain in possession. About 48.52 million tokens, or 24.4%, have been sold or transferred.
At the same time, only about 32.95 million LIT, which represents 16.57% of the total, can be categorized as accumulated beyond the initial allocations.
The imbalance indicates that buy-side beliefs have lagged sell-side activity in the early trading window.
Lighter’s LIT Joins One of Crypto’s Biggest Airdrops Even As Tokenomics Under Scrutiny
Derivatives market data reinforced this view, as net flow indicators for perpetual LIT contracts showed consistent aggressive selling across multiple time frames.
The net delta was negative about $108,000 in one hour, increased to almost $1 million in four hours, and deteriorated to over $6 million in ten hours.
Last day’s hourly net flow data also showed repeated negative swings, indicating that price rebounds were accompanied by renewed selling.
The sell-off followed one of the largest token giveaways in crypto history, when Lighter sent out approximately $675 million worth of LIT tokens to early users, ranking the distribution as the 10th largest airdrop by dollar value. according to to CoinGecko data.
The airdrop exceeded 1inch Network’s distribution in 2020, but remained well below Uniswap’s record-breaking airdrop of $6.43 billion.
Some early users reported receiving six-figure allocations, highlighting the size of the distribution.
At the same time, the debate over Lighter’s tokenomics intensified. Half of the total LIT offering is allocated to users, partners and growth initiatives, while the remaining 50% is reserved for the team and investors, subject to a one-year cliff and multi-year vesting.
Community responds as @Lichter_xyz‘S $LIT token launches, with half of the supply going to insiders, prompting debate over its fairness as a community-focused launch.#Lighter #Tokenomicshttps://t.co/aZkUeD9UeK
— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) December 30, 2025
The launch comes as Lighter continues to post strong trading numbers within a fast-growing on-chain derivatives market.
The platform incorporated approximately $3.90 billion in perpetual 24-hour volume and approximately $201 billion over 30 days, putting it among the top decentralized venues alongside Hyperliquid and Aster.
The broader perpetuals DEX sector has seen explosive growth in 2025, with cumulative volume reaches This year alone, $12.09 trillion and over $7.9 trillion were generated.
The post LIT Token Plummets 22% as Lighter Airdrop Distribution Goes Live appeared first on Cryptonews.
