Lighter TGE Debate: TGE Timeframe and Long-Term Positioning Spark Disagreement

According to Mars Finance, on December 15th, Lighter sparked intense discussion in the crypto community, with opinions clearly divided regarding its TGE (token generation event) timing, its potential relationship with Coinbase, and its long-term competitiveness relative to Hyperliquid. On one hand, bulls believe that long on Lighter/LIT is essentially a bet on Lighter's ability to achieve deep synergy with Coinbase, Robinhood, and mainstream VCs and liquidity funds, thereby gaining compliance and channel advantages. Lighter has been included in Coinbase's development roadmap, and the CEO's past public mentions of a "December TGE," coupled with the token contract deployment timeline entering the common airdrop window, have strengthened market expectations of a "TGE + airdrop within the year." On the other hand, however, strong skepticism also exists. Some traders, comparing Lighter and HYPE, pointed out that their bullish logic is completely different: Hyperliquid is seen as a long-term narrative of building a complete on-chain financial ecosystem outside the existing regulatory framework; Lighter is more like a "cheaper and easier-to-use trading product," but lacks ecosystem-level expansion space such as staking, Gas Tokens, and IaaS, and its potential TAM (markets available for service) is considered significantly smaller. Some community members also questioned why Lighter, despite being closed-source, was able to obtain listing and custody support from Coinbase, while HYPE has been unable to achieve this, sparking discussion about the standards and logic behind this difference. A pessimistic view suggests that after the TGE and airdrop, the withdrawal of incentive funds may lead to a decline in Lighter's trading volume and metrics. If Hyperliquid launches a new round of incentives (such as S3), a large amount of inflated trading funds may flow back to Hyperliquid and HIP-3 DEX, forcing Lighter to launch a new round of incentives to maintain its competitive position. Currently, most opinions still lean towards the Lighter airdrop likely occurring within the year, citing reasons including the start of the Sybil address cleanup and unusual trading signals in the prediction market.