You may have seen people call Lighter the “next Hyperliquid.” Let’s get this straight: it’s not. I know there are a lot of horny, thirsty frens still mourning about missing the Hyperliquid airdrop, now praying day and night that Lighter’s drop will be their life-changing liquidity event (it could be, but yk…) Hyperliquid didn’t blow up just because it had a smooth perp DEX. It started as a DEX, yes, but then: Scaled its engine into Hyperliquid EVM (an L1) Built a fat protocol + fat application flywheel Locked users in with real products while expanding the ecosystem Did all of this without VC money, founders and protocol incentives 100% aligned (period) Now Lighter: ✅ zk-rollup perp DEX ✅ Points farming hype ❌ No proven path to L1 or ecosystem yet ❌ VC-backed (a16z, Lightspeed). Which means… much value will be returned to the VCs So yeah, positioning Lighter as “Hyperliquid 2.0” works as a narrative, but fundamentally it’s off....imho Hyperliquid = a self-made 0→1 ecosystem with a real revenue engine (their perps) Lighter = a VC-backed perp dex with gud tech yes, but no jeff I mean, whenever BTC/ETH drops, Hyperliquid rakes in massive fees. That revenue flows straight into buybacks, $HYPE price pumps, traders pile back in, and volume grows even more. That’s a real flywheel and it only works because there’s no VC waiting in the bushes only to show up 1 year after TGE to dump. btw I use lighter everyday I'm not trying to shit on them. I really like the product and team. Just want to address that the "Lighter is HL 2.0" chant is kinda cope.