Lighter Airdrop is coming: Is a valuation of 3.7 billion reasonable? Is now a chance to get in or catch a falling knife?

The on-chain perpetual futures trading platform Lighter has opened airdrop registration. The current premarket price is around 3.75, corresponding to an FDV of 3.75 billion USD, while the latest valuation from the last round was 1.5 billion USD. The author has compiled the market capitalization to revenue ratio of Hyperliquid (PS Ratio), as well as the Lighter PS Ratio based on VC valuation and premarket valuation conversion, suggesting that the current premarket price of Lighter may not be a very good entry point. On the other hand, the trading volume divided by open interest ratio of Lighter is significantly higher than that of Hyperliquid, indicating that there may be some wash trading involved.

Lighter has opened the airdrop submission page.

Click on Points in Lighter, then enter the Airdrop page. A master account ( has pre-filled address ) and can add four additional addresses, for a total of five addresses including the master account. Users must submit addresses on the Airdrop page and set the percentage weight for each address. The form will close at 10:00 PM Taiwan time on Friday, December 26. If there is no second Lighter account, it is also acceptable to submit only the current address.

Lighter wash trading is questionable, and the PS Ratio has little room left.

Currently, the Lighter token has begun premarket trading on Whales Market, with a price of 3.75 at the time of writing, corresponding to an FDV of approximately 3.75 billion USD. For reference, Lighter's latest funding round valuation was 1.5 billion USD.

( Transaction fee cryptocurrency exchange, how the Lighter supported by Peter Thiel replicates the business model of Robinhood )

The leading player in the same track, Hyperliquid, has an FDV of approximately 24.8 billion USD, with an annualized revenue of about 781 million USD. DeFiLlama shows that Lighter has an annualized revenue of around 154 million USD (. The DeFiLlama algorithm multiplies nearly thirty days of revenue by 12, which is more favorable for Lighter, driven by airdrop incentives for trading ). The organized market capitalization to revenue ratio (PS Ratio) is as follows:

Hyperliquid: 31x

Lighter ( VC valuation ): 9.7 times

Lighter ( premarket valuation ): 24 times

It can be observed that Lighter has limited upward potential at the premarket price, and with the market sentiment still not optimistic, it may not be a very good entry point. As for some community claims: if we take Lighter's trading volume and multiply it by Robinhood's PFOF, it can be calculated that if Lighter could negotiate a similar PFOF, the annual revenue would be approximately $474.5 million.

According to Perpetual Pulse data, Hyperliquid's volume/open interest is about 3.3 times, while Lighter is 24.5. The high volume of Lighter contrasts sharply with its extremely low open interest. With a ratio of 24.59, its revenue expectations are severely inflated. If this volume is mainly generated by intentional wash trading under the expectation of zero fees or airdrops, then in the future, when converting to PFOF (payment for order flow), institutions may be unwilling to pay high fees for these directionless and very short-term orders.

Unless these wash trading users can be converted into real holdings users in the future, the current premarket valuation of 3.75 billion USD may face significant correction risks.

This article Lighter is about to Airdrop: Is a valuation of 3.7 billion reasonable? Is now the opportunity to get in or just catching the falling knife? Originally appeared on on-chain news ABMedia.