Lighter Anti-Witch Storm: Professional Token Farmers Suffer Heavy Losses, KOLs Hit Hard

Vladimir Novakovski, founder and CEO of Lighter, recently stated in a response that the number of complaints received through the platform’s appeal mechanism after large-scale Sybil screening actions was “lower than expected.”

Behind this confidence lies a complex algorithm involving the quantitative team and several experienced protocol and individual “Sybil hunters” in the design process, including clustering analysis and behavior pattern recognition, along with extensive data science work.

01 Event Storm

A storm sweeping through the crypto community is centered around the decentralized trading platform Lighter. The recent large-scale Sybil attack screening by the platform unexpectedly resulted in many addresses of professional airdrop hunters and some key opinion leaders (KOLs) being marked as invalid.

The core issue of this storm is value distribution. According to industry data, Lighter completed a funding round of up to $68 million in October 2025, with a project valuation reaching $1.5 billion. Investors include well-known institutions such as Founders Fund, Ribbit Capital, Haun Ventures, and Robinhood.

Behind this huge valuation is the community’s anticipation of potential airdrops. Like many DeFi projects, Lighter uses a points reward system, distributing 250,000 points weekly to users who trade and provide liquidity. These points are often seen as proof of future token airdrops.

02 The Technical Curtain of Anti-Sybil Measures

Lighter’s anti-Sybil mechanism design demonstrates a high level of rigor. Since the private testing phase, the platform has adopted an invitation-only registration process.

Only users with an invitation code can create an account, and one of the conditions for obtaining an invitation code is that existing users must have accumulated a certain trading volume. This design significantly increases the cost of mass registration of fake accounts.

New users registering for a Lighter account are required to submit information such as wallet and social media accounts, for example linking Twitter and email, adding manual verification steps. In terms of points distribution strategy, Lighter adopts a fixed weekly total, making abnormal trading behaviors easier to monitor.

Vladimir Novakovski, founder of Lighter, explicitly stated that the specific details of the anti-Sybil algorithm will not be disclosed to avoid “targeted optimization.” However, he also pointed out that the platform has established an appeal mechanism, allowing users who believe the algorithm has made an unfair judgment to fill out an appeal form on Discord.

03 Market Reaction and Token Performance

Despite being at the center of controversy, Lighter’s token LIT has shown some resilience in the market. According to the latest data as of December 29, LIT’s pre-trading market price is $3.48, up 5.85% in the past 24 hours.

LIT’s all-time high was $3.70, reached on December 28, 2025. The maximum supply of the token is 1 billion, with a fully diluted valuation (FDV) of approximately $3.47 billion.

Notably, LIT was first listed on MEXC exchange through an Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) from December 24 to December 29, 2025, at a price of $2.00. Compared to the current pre-trading market price, investors participating in the IEO have already achieved about a 73.8% return on investment.

04 The Dilemma of Professional Airdrop Hunters

This anti-Sybil operation has dealt a significant blow to professional airdrop hunters. These users typically create multiple related accounts through carefully designed strategies to participate in early project activities and maximize potential airdrop gains.

Lighter’s screening method clearly disrupts this traditional “game rule.” According to the mechanism design, the platform is likely to take additional measures during the final airdrop, such as excluding wallets in the same cluster, identifying multiple addresses controlled by a single entity, or setting minimum trading thresholds.

While these measures protect genuine users’ interests, they inevitably also include some edge cases and users employing complex strategies in the screening process. Some KOLs, managing multiple community wallets or test accounts, have been mistakenly caught, leading to dissatisfaction expressed on social media.

05 Industry Compliance Trends

Lighter’s anti-Sybil campaign is not an isolated case but a microcosm of the crypto industry’s move toward institutionalization and compliance. Major global trading platforms are strengthening user protection and compliance frameworks.

Take Gate as an example: in 2025, it experienced significant growth, expanding its user base from less than 20 million to over 47 million worldwide, with monthly spot trading volume reaching $160 billion. Meanwhile, Gate obtained the EU’s MiCA license, the DMCC license in Dubai, and became one of the first EU exchanges licensed by AUSTRAC in Australia.

Founder Dr. Han predicts that by 2025, the cryptocurrency market will undergo institutionalization and structural maturity, driven by tighter regulations, increased institutional funds, and growth in on-chain trading.

06 Balancing Fairness and Decentralization

In response to the controversy, the Lighter founder emphasized that ultimately value will be concentrated in the token, and Lighter will not adopt a “dual-track” model of tokens and equity. All stakeholders—including early users, the team, and investors—will align their core interests around the token.

This stance reflects the difficult balance the project faces between maintaining fair airdrop practices and upholding the vision of decentralization. On one hand, overly lenient distribution could dilute token value through Sybil attacks; on the other hand, overly strict screening might mistakenly exclude genuine users.

Technically, as an Ethereum-based perpetual trading protocol, Lighter employs specialized zk-rollup technology, ensuring scalability, security, and transparency through cryptographic methods and data structures. Its verifiable matching engine makes trade execution both efficient and auditable.

Future Outlook

As of December 29, LIT’s price in the pre-trading market remains around $3.48, still significantly above the IEO price. This indicates that the market’s confidence in Lighter’s long-term prospects remains intact despite short-term controversy.

This Sybil attack controversy may just be a microcosm of the crypto world’s ongoing maturation. As mainstream platforms like Gate push the industry toward greater compliance and transparency, finding the right balance between incentivizing early participants and preventing system abuse will be a challenge all projects must face.