Perpetual’s Lighter Platform Hits Withdrawal Snag: Technical Glitch Freezes Funds

Digital asset traders hit a wall as Perpetual's flagship trading platform, Lighter, stumbles on a critical technical fault—withdrawals are down.

### The Glitch in the Machine

Users reporting failed transactions and pending requests. No timeline for a fix, just the standard 'team is investigating' notice. Funds are stuck in digital limbo.

### Trust on the Line

In crypto, liquidity is king. When a platform can't process outflows, confidence evaporates faster than a meme coin's hype. This isn't a minor bug—it's a direct hit to core functionality.

### The Bigger Picture

Another day, another DeFi hiccup. It's almost tradition—build fast, break things, and hope users don't notice their money is temporarily fictional. The perpetual promise of frictionless finance meets the perpetual reality of technical debt.

A lag between Lighter’s Prover and its Sequencer is credited for the withdrawal delays

Expect Panic at the Disco until Lighter actually communicates in Discord — ZK baby.

Withdrawals will pile up, transaction fails common, reversions and not a single post from team, just the Lighter candle holders.

Can we get a Gauntlet thinkpiece on withdrawal ADLs? pic.twitter.com/0zK9strL4j

— Mister Todd (@pondermint) December 30, 2025

The disruption is allegedly caused by a processing lag between the exchange’s Prover and its Sequencer, causing significant delays when finalizing withdrawals. On-chain data from Lighter’s explorer shows that the last committed block (Block #137759880) was finalized approximately 9 hours prior to the time of this publication. One of the most recent visible blocks recorded only one transaction and a single withdrawal log, showcasing a significant slowdown in withdrawal processing on the trading platform.

Lighter has not issued a formal statement to address the cause of the withdrawal disruptions or when the issue will be sorted. The lack of communication has left users wondering whether the protocol is queuing withdrawals or temporarily restricting orders at the protocol level. 

Disruptions facing withdrawal transactions on LAYER 2 platforms often spark a wave of concern among users due to their reliance on sequencers and provers when transferring funds back to Layer 1. Lighter users now depend on error messages and on-chain data to monitor the status of their funds. 

The disruptions emerged as Lighter rolled out its native Lighter Infrastructure Token (LIT) on Tuesday. A previous report by Cryptopolitan detailed that the token WOULD start trading on Lighter’s platforms before spreading to other exchanges. The Lighter team announced the structure of the token, highlighting its key use cases as part of a growing ecosystem. The token launch included an airdrop campaign to early adopters worth 25% of the token’s fully diluted value.

Lighter stated that a portion of the revenue generated from the project’s decentralized exchange will be allocated for token buybacks and growth-oriented use cases, contingent upon prevailing market conditions. The token buyback program is part of the developers’ strategy to create long-term value for the protocol’s community members.  

According to data from CoinMarketCap, a cryptocurrency data aggregator, Lighter’s LIT is currently trading at $2.84, with a market capitalization of $710 million and a 24-hour trading volume of $8.3 million. The crypto asset is up 5.72% and has hit a high of $4.04 since its launch. Data from Coingecko shows that Lighter has registered open interests worth $1.4 billion in the last 24 hours and reached a trading volume of $3.6 billion in the last day.

DEX perpetual futures trading is gaining popularity among traders

Perpetual futures trading on decentralized exchanges has experienced explosive growth in 2025 on platforms such as Hyperliquid, Lighter, and Aster. Cryptopolitan previously reported that derivatives trading on DEXs surged in 2025 as traders sought ways to amplify their exposure with limited capital. The report highlighted that perpetual futures monthly trades have exceeded $1 trillion, with Hyperliquid leading the pack.

Hyperliquid recently announced it had onboarded more than 600,000 new users in 2025 and achieved $844 million in revenue. Cryptopolitan reported that the DEX drew a total of $3.87 billion in inflows and a total trading volume of $2.95 trillion, spanning 198.9 billion transactions since January this year. 

During the year, the decentralized exchange averaged about $8.34 billion per day, with spot trading volume on the exchange exceeding $116 billion. HIP-3 trading activities also surged, reaching $11 billion. Bitcoin was the most actively traded cryptocurrency on the platform, achieving a trading volume of $1.16 trillion.

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