Lighter Proves Points Still King

Olivia Capozzalo & Squiffs _
December 09, 2025

gm Defiers!

Today’s big story:

• Lighter is leading perp DEXs in perpetual as well as spot volumes, as farmers stack points ahead of its TGE.

In other news:

• Markets rally ahead of Fed meeting
• STABLE drops after messy launch
• Hyperliquid launches direct USDC transfers
• BMIC Paves the Way for Crypto’s Quantum Computing Revolution [SPONSORED]

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

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In the third episode of our Avalanche Ecosystems mini-series, we explore one of crypto’s biggest trends: real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. From land records to treasuries and equities, Avalanche enables institutions to create true onchain assets and not just wrappers. With insights from Ava Labs, Balcony, Grove, and Dinari, we explore how Avalanche is powering the next wave of RWA innovation.

Watch Ep. 3 Now

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Past 24 Hours

	TICKER	VALUE	24H
	Bitcoin	$93,878	4.21 %
	Ethereum	$3,366.63	8.49 %
	XRP	$2.14	3.02 %
	BNB	$914.89	2.39 %
	Solana	$142.2	6.21 %

Today’s Big Story

Lighter Tops Perp DEX Leaderboards As Year-End Approaches

A little over a year after the Hyperliquid TGE shattered the entire market’s expectations, Lighter has become the market’s new leading perpetual DEX by volume, as its own token generation event swiftly approaches.

Despite Hyperliquid being 2025’s top performer, Lighter now leads Hyperliquid in 24 hour derivative and spot volumes, proving that incentives are still king.

Hyperliquid has yet to release any information on its future token emissions, while team member tokens are unlocking, and U.S. airdrop recipients are now eligible for long-term capital gains tax, leaving its immediate token price up in the air.

Meanwhile Lighter is still running its initial points system, with a token drop anticipated to come near the end of the year, if not early 2026, and the points are currently changing hands on OTC markets for $77 per point.

While Hyperliquid remains the preferred destination for many top traders, and still boasts a more than $28 billion valuation, Lighter’s rise to prominence over the last few months shows how quickly the script can flip on any platform in DeFi.

Lighter’s initial claim to fame was its ZK encryptions, which offer traders positioning privacy, and its zero fee system, which can save high frequency traders and market makers significant amounts of money.

As a result, Lighter currently leads all perpetual derivatives exchanges in 30 day volume, and perhaps most notably, in spot volume.

Perpetual swap volumes. Source: DefiLlama

Lighter launched spot trading just last week, and only offers ETH at the moment. However that hasn’t deterred capital from flocking to its spot system. Lighter has processed $575 million in spot ETH volume over the last 24 hours, compared to Hyperliquid’s entire spot market — which spans BTC, ETH, HYPE, SOL etc — which has seen just under $300 million in the same timeframe.

Chasing Points

While Lighter’s zero-fee system is attractive for spot traders, the demand for ETH spot trading on the DEX is massive, and is almost certainly fueled by airdrop farmers looking to stack up precious points ahead of Lighter’s TGE.

The phenomenon goes to show just how cutthroat the current market really is, and that the majority of participants are happy to bounce from platform to platform. For perp DEXs in particular, volume boosts from incentives programs not only enhance metrics that can increase assumed valuations, but also boost market liquidity, creating a self fulfilling flywheel effect where the product itself is improved due to airdrop hunters.

While at face value this seems like a win-win, many stragglers and loyalists often remain at their DEX of choice, and in due time that may fragment liquidity across different DEXs the same way the Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem has become fragmented — but for now, that is a problem for the future.

Squiffs, resident degen at The Defiant

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🎬WATCH

More Than Wrappers | RWAs on Avalanche | Ecosystems, Ep. 3

In our third episode of the Avalanche Ecosystems mini-series, we dive into one of the most important trends in crypto: tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs). From land records to treasuries, private credit, and publicly traded equities, Avalanche is enabling institutions to not just issue onchain wrappers, but to create the real thing. It's tokenization the right way.

With interviews from Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo and Morgan Krupetsky (Ava Labs), Dan Silverman (Balcony), Kevin Chan (Grove) and Gabriel Otte (Dinari), we explore how Avalanche’s architecture is powering a new wave of RWAs across finance, government infrastructure, and consumer applications.

Watch the mini doc here:

This content is part of a media partnership between The Defiant and Ava Labs

Top News in the Past 24 Hours

• Crypto Market Rallies Ahead of Fed Meeting The cryptocurrency market rallied today, Dec. 9, ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy meeting, where the central bank is widely expected to cut interest rates for the third time this year. Why it matters: While a 25 basis point rate cut is expected, it is not guaranteed, experts said.
• Bitfinex-Backed Stable Sees Hectic Mainnet Launch as Token Price Drops StableChain, a Layer 1 network for stablecoin-based payments, has stumbled out of the gate as users reported they couldn’t withdraw funds or claim their STABLE tokens. Why it matters: Stable is backed by Tether’s sister company Bitfinex, as well as Tether’s CEO, and raised $28 million in its seed round.
• Hyperliquid Launches Direct USDC Transfers Hyperliquid has linked USDC across HyperCore, its trading engine, and HyperEVM, its smart contract layer. Why it matters: The move aims to reduce reliance on the current Arbitrum-based bridge and pave the way for native minting.

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