$LIT Getting on board at a high point has once again become the exit liquidity for the scalpers.. After the TGE dump, the price surged to $3. The project team made a fake move, making me mistakenly believe that the selling pressure had ended. Under a vague positive sentiment, I got in
Looking back at the past, I realized that every deep loss was due to a vague sense of understanding—this situation is far more dangerous than being cautious about entering or simply not understanding and staying out!
Post-event research and analysis must keep up, after all, we should 'earn confidently and lose with clarity'
Below are some data and perspectives:
The core narrative of Lighter: retail investors always pay zero fees, while market makers and institutions pay the fees. Market makers profit from slippage spreads. This model replicates the Silicon Valley unicorn company Robinhood, theoretically pioneering a new path in the crypto space
All protocol revenue is used for buybacks/dividends
Technically uses zero-knowledge proofs (zk), ensuring optimal on-chain security while maintaining a seamless user experience (the whitepaper details many technical implementations)
Integrating the RWA trading section, on-chain US stocks backed by a group of Silicon Valley investment institutions including Robinhood, aiming to surpass Hyper—this is genuinely exciting, so I placed a bet. My thinking was: if investing in the on-chain perpetuals sector, locking 75% of the position for one year, with a FDV under $300M doesn't seem expensive!
But the data tells a different story
Still in the score-boosting phase, daily protocol revenue was very high—close to $1M per day—but after TGE, it dropped to $200K per day
Especially over the weekend, the volume dropped to just a few ten thousands, causing the token price to crash rapidly, far from expectations
Calculating at $200K per day, protocol annual revenue is $70M, current market cap $500M, PE = 7. After tracking data for several days, we found the market pricing has consistently fluctuated around a 7x PE
Horizontal comparison
Aster, protocol annual revenue $330M, market cap $1.9B, PE = 5.7
Hyper, protocol annual revenue $1.1B, market cap $7.6B, PE = 6.9, close to 7
If looking only at current data without forecasting future growth, Lighter's current price is not undervalued—the market has priced it with the same PE as Hyper!
But on January 14th, a new development emerged—the official launch of the staking feature. All funds deposited into the LLP must now be accompanied by LIT staking to earn protocol revenue
For every 1 LIT staked, you get 10 USDC deposit capacity. The current LLP pool holds $500M in funds, meaning 50M LIT must be staked if no withdrawals occur. Currently, 38M LIT have been staked, yet the token price is falling instead of rising—this proves the source is entirely from existing holders, not new buyers
For future price growth, the short-term outlook depends on how much potential buying interest remains in the remaining 12M LIT
Just now, LIT was listed on both Robinhood and OKX spot markets. Long-term, the price will be determined by monitoring protocol revenue and TVL changes in the LLP!
