Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Large-wallet activity on @Lighter_xyz and @Mantle_Official just hit its highest level in six months, according to on-chain analytics firm @SantimentData. Lighter recorded 86 transactions worth more than $100,000, while Mantle registered 37 such transactions, marking the highest daily whale activity for both tokens in the past six months.

Although whale transaction metrics do not distinguish between buying and selling, they are widely viewed as indicators of heightened activity by large holders, and such spikes often coincide with periods when institutional investors or high-net-worth wallets reposition their portfolios ahead of significant market moves.

$LIT catches a Robinhood catalyst The surge in $LIT whale activity follows a major product integration. @RobinhoodApp Wallet now offers in-app perpetual futures trading, with the engine underneath being @Lighter_xyz, the rising zk-powered perps exchange atop Ethereum. Robinhood Chain, a Layer 2 built using Arbitrum's tech stack, went live on public mainnet on July 1, with the Lighter perps integration arriving alongside it. Lighter has committed $11 million of its native $LIT tokens to the Robinhood community as part of the deal, and eligible users earn points on perpetual futures trades on Lighter, converting directly into $LIT, with no fees on perpetuals accessed through Lighter for the first 90 days.

$LIT surged 24% as Robinhood Wallet added Lighter's perpetual futures trading. The token has since climbed further to trade near $2.70, a fresh high. As an exchange based in America with its token issued out of a Delaware C-corp, Lighter has a cleaner path into regulatory approval than offshore-first competitors, adding to the longer-term investment case behind the whale positioning.

$MNT whales accumulate but price stays stuck The picture for @Mantle_Official is more mixed. Whale transaction counts matched the six-month high, yet the price response has been muted. Mantle remains in a broader downtrend, with $MNT trading near $0.43 after failing to reclaim the key $0.57 resistance, and while the RSI has recovered from oversold conditions, momentum remains weak and buyers have yet to confirm a trend reversal.

For $MNT to validate the recent whale activity, the token must first reclaim $0.57, which could pave the way toward $0.94 and eventually $1.08. Mantle continues to benefit from its expanding Layer 2 ecosystem and one of the largest community-controlled treasuries in the crypto market, and ongoing ecosystem development, DeFi incentives, and long-term infrastructure growth may be encouraging whales to accumulate positions while prices remain significantly below previous highs.

For now, the divergence is stark. Lighter has a clear narrative driving price alongside the whale flows. Mantle has the accumulation signal but is still waiting for a price catalyst to match it.

Sources
CoinPedia: Crypto Whales Accumulating Lighter and Mantle
The Block: Robinhood Chain Goes Live with Lighter Perps
Robinhood Newsroom: Robinhood Chain Mainnet Launch

The perpetuals exchange will start burning the LIT it buys with revenue and tap its token reserve to keep staking yields flowing.

Lighter, one of the largest decentralized perpetuals exchanges by trading volume, said it will start permanently burning the LIT tokens it buys back with exchange revenue and will fund staking rewards from its ecosystem token reserve.

Lighter has bought back about 15.5 million LIT — roughly 6.3% of circulating supply — using exchange revenue since its token generation event, the company said in an X post Tuesday. Those tokens will now be withdrawn from the exchange and sent to a burn address on Ethereum mainnet, with the first burn set for the weeks after the end of the second quarter.

Separately, Lighter will begin paying staking rewards from its remaining ecosystem tokens, targeting an initial 6% annualized yield. With about 125 million LIT staked, that yield would distribute roughly 7.5 million LIT a year from a remaining reserve of 250 million.

The changes pull in two directions on supply. Burning bought-back tokens removes them from circulation, while paying staking yield from the reserve releases tokens that were not yet circulating, partly offsetting the burns. The update also answers requests from holders for clarity on what happens to the LIT the protocol repurchases, a recurring question across perpetuals exchanges that run buybacks.

Lighter briefly overtook Hyperliquid in monthly perpetuals volume around its December launch, when airdrop incentives pulled traders to its zero-fee order book. Activity has since cooled as those incentives wound down, which puts more weight on whether the token's economics can sustain demand on their own.

LIT rose about 2% over 24 hours and is up roughly 20% over the past week and about 39% over the past 30 days, outpacing Bitcoin, which fell almost 3% over the past day and about 20% over the past month, according to CoinGecko. The token trades near $1.84, about 77% below its record high. Its market capitalization is around $461 million; its fully diluted valuation, which counts the full one billion token supply against the 250 million now circulating, is roughly $1.84 billion.

Buybacks Become BurnsLighter had been buying LIT on the open market with exchange revenue since its token launch at the end of December, but had not committed to destroying the tokens. It said Tuesday that the buybacks will now reduce supply permanently through burns, executed by sending LIT to an Ethereum burn address.

The exchange flagged one mechanical caveat: the tokens it burns may be undistributed LIT rather than the exact tokens it repurchased, an approach it said is economically equivalent for holders and cheaper to administer.

The buybacks are funded by trading activity. Lighter has generated about $2.87 million in protocol revenue over the past 30 days and roughly $53 million since launch, according to DefiLlama.

Continued Exchange RevenueThe burn program depends on continued exchange revenue to fund the buybacks, and revenue has been modest relative to the token's valuation.

Funding staking from the 250 million-token reserve also draws down a finite pool; that reserve could deplete faster if revenue weakens or staking participation climbs, and the 6% target is not fixed.

Lighter said it will execute the first burn in the weeks after the close of the second quarter, a milestone holders will be able to verify onchain.

Staking Shifts to the ReserveLighter launched its staking program in January and has distributed about 3.72 million LIT to stakers so far, including roughly 170,000 LIT from a fee-credits program.

Those rewards were bootstrapped with pre-launch revenue while exchange income was directed entirely toward buybacks. Effective immediately, the protocol will instead draw on ecosystem tokens, which it said is a more aligned use because the rewards flow to holders with the longest time horizons.

The targeted 6% yield is denominated in LIT and can be adjusted at the team's discretion based on market conditions, protocol performance and sustainability, Lighter said. At about 125 million LIT staked, roughly half of circulating supply is committed to the program.

Lighter laid out four priorities for managing its treasury going forward: rewarding long-term stakers, reducing supply through burns, preserving tokens for future partnerships and growth programs, and stewarding the reserve for long-term value. The company said its ecosystem tokens exist to grow the protocol, deepen liquidity and reward users.