#ETF与衍生品 The Lighter TGE buzz is indeed worth paying attention to, but I have to say—regarding the market comparisons between it and Hyperliquid, some opinions still remain superficial.

First, on the fee model, Lighter's zero fees sound attractive, but essentially it's "exchanging money for time"—retail traders enjoy 300 milliseconds of delay for lower costs, while institutions pay for speed advantages. This is indeed friendly to small fund accounts, but don't forget that Hyperliquid's tiered fee structure is also competitive for large funds over $500,000. The key depends on your trading size and frequency; it's not something that can be concluded in one sentence.

On the technical side, Lighter's architecture as an Ethereum L2 is quite interesting—features like general cross-margin, ZK bridge-less cross-chain enable users to earn staking rewards and trading leverage simultaneously, which looks good in terms of capital efficiency. However, Hyperliquid's single-chain design, despite trust assumptions, actually offers stronger certainty in trade execution.

What I care most about is the lifecycle after the TGE. History shows that the realization of airdrop expectations often marks a watershed for derivatives platforms. Lighter has top-tier VC backing and the Robinhood connection, which sounds like building a closed loop of "retail user acquisition + on-chain execution + institutional market making." But whether this can sustain organic trading volume growth after the incentive tide recedes is the real test.

In the short term, focus on the TGE timing and airdrop scale, but when it comes to products like copy trading, I pay more attention to the platform's actual trading depth and slippage performance under no-incentive conditions. Let's wait until the end of the year for the data.