The LIT token from Lighter has not commenced open trading yet, but the market has swiftly established a valuation following Tuesday’s airdrop.
Opinions among traders are divided on whether this new governance token from the Ethereum-based Layer 2 decentralized exchange (DEX) should have a fully diluted valuation nearing $2 billion or $3 billion.
Fully diluted valuation (FDV) refers to a token’s overall market value by multiplying its price by the maximum possible supply, assuming all tokens are issued and circulating.
In premarket trading, LIT was around $3.20, indicating an FDV exceeding $3 billion, as reported by CoinMarketCap. However, prediction markets are adopting a more conservative stance.
Recent low-float launches, such as Monad, EigenLayer, and Movement, have inflated headline valuations to billions even while most tokens are still locked, suggesting that FDV acts less as an indicator of actual demand and more as a speculative estimate that can easily be skewed without careful scrutiny of liquidity and tokenomics.
According to data from Polymarket, traders estimate roughly equal chances that LIT will surpass a $3 billion fully diluted valuation one day post-launch, although bullish expectations for $4 billion and $6 billion outcomes have subsided, particularly following market turmoil in October.
As a comparison, Hyperliquid’s HYPE token launched with an approximate FDV of $4.2 billion last November.
Insights from Dune data indicate that Lighter’s daily perpetuals volume has averaged around $2.7 billion over the last week, positioning it just behind Hyperliquid and Aster.
