Lighter Founder: All Economic Value of Lighter Will Flow to the Token; Equity Structure Converted to Token Structure at TGE

Odaily Odaily星球日报讯 Lighter founder Vladimir Novakovski published an article on X this morning titled "Equity vs. Token."

In the article, Novakovski clarified that all economic value generated by Lighter will belong to the token holders.

Lighter's original intention has always been to use venture capital to guide the project until the moment of token issuance. Lighter is a US company with only one entity — the entity that issued equity in the years leading up to the TGE is the same entity that issued tokens at the TGE. Apart from converting into a token cap table at the time of TGE, the equity cap table will serve no other function in the future.

More specifically, Lighter completed its final equity funding round a few months before the TGE, which was oversubscribed by approximately 5 times, attracting over $300 million in capital interest for a $68 million allocation. At that time, all equity stakeholders (including early investors and former employees) were informed of the future plan — that their equity value would only be reflected as a position on the token cap table — and were given the opportunity to sell their equity shares. Anyone who disagreed with the principle that "all value goes to the token" could easily exit at a higher valuation. Ultimately, less than 1% of equity holders chose to sell their shares, while everyone else chose to stay, thereby supporting Lighter's commitment to "value accruing to the token."