Traders are switching to Lighter The “Black Friday” crash hit PerpDEXs hard - some triggered aggressive ADLs, others shut down or passed debt to users. I checked USD inflows to see where capital moved: - Lighter leads in inflows - Hyperliquid leads in outflows Does this signal a change in sentiment towards HL? It's hard to say for sure, but in the shortterm, traders were very unhappy with the forced closure of profitable shorts. The numbers clearly indicate this. Indirectly, this is evidenced by the HYPE price, which fell to levels seen 4 months ago. HL lost 9.3% of its TVL in 5 days. In percentage terms, only Aster, which already had a bad reputation, lost more. Meanwhile, Lighter unexpectedly emerged as the leader in inflows, adding 6.6% to its TVL in 5 days. This was despite the team receiving significant backlash due to the frontend shutdown following the crash. Drift also pleasantly surprised, with significant inflows, positioning it as the leading PerpDEX on Solana. __________________ What this story teaches us: 1. Your users are more important than your holders 2. Solving issues in post-crisis situations 1. Users HL openly promoted the narrative that it added 50% to HLP profits, generating huge returns for HLP investors. However, traders began leaving Hyperliquid, some of whom came to Lighter, despite the fact that LLP lost 5% of its TVL. "This is clear evidence that a project should focus on its target clients, not secondary ones." Also quite interesting: HL says they're not a VC, but a community-oriented. So why, then, did they let HLP investors profit during this collapse, not the trading community? 2. Post-crisis management This is a key issue for any business, and the CEO plays a key role here. While @chameleon_jeff talked about making huge profits for HLP investors and remained silent about ADL and trader issues, @vnovakovski publicly acknowledged the problem, took responsibility, and is refunding users affected by the Lighter outage. Furthermore, he's even compensating some of the LLP investors' funds, as he realized many of them weren't aware of how the pool works. Although, in fact, he didn't have to do this, and I know plenty of people in the community who tried to dissuade him from doing so. But he did. For me, this is an example of how a leader should behave. ____________ This post is not meant to criticize Hyperliquid. I love the project, its team, and its community. They've changed the industry. I've worked extensively with HL before and its ecosystem now. But I urge them to learn from their mistakes and not repeat them. ____________ Lighter proves that they can take on any challenge, assume responsibility, and solve any problem. Teams like these are the kind of people you want to work with.