The token HYPE, the native coin of the Hyperliquid platform, suddenly soared to $98 on Lighter, a perpetual futures exchange based on Ethereum L2. However, the growth was short-lived: soon the price crashed back down.
The Lighter team explained the spike by trading bot activity, not real demand. Nevertheless, the incident sparked a wave of criticism from the community.
Why did HYPE’s price soar to $98 on Lighter
The spike happened just a few hours ago. On social network X, screenshots began circulating showing the HYPE price jumping from $48 to $98. A long green candle filled the entire chart.
Such a more than twofold increase instantly triggered a wave of discussion. However, the Lighter team quickly issued an explanation: the cause was a malfunction in one of the trading bots.
“The malfunctioning bot swept the HYPE order book with a large volume,” the official statement said.
According to the exchange, there were neither liquidations nor losses for users at the time. It was limited to a short-term price distortion. To avoid disrupting the chart display, the team decided to remove the false wick from the public interface.
At the same time, they emphasized that the blockchain data remained untouched and available for viewing through explorers. This decision was explained as a way to care for traders, so as not to disrupt visual references.
“On-chain data remains unchanged and open to everyone in block explorers. But since we manage the main interface, we try to display charts in a way that is useful for traders,” Lighter explained.
The reaction was mixed. Some supported the decision, calling it practical.
“It’s quite reasonable to remove that wick from the interface, to be honest,” one user wrote.
Nevertheless, criticism prevailed in the discussions. Many observers accused Lighter of undermining the principles of decentralized finance (DeFi).
The community accuses Lighter of censorship and manipulation
Crypto analyst Duo Nine criticized Lighter‘s decision, stating that it only masks liquidity problems instead of openly acknowledging the situation.
“Instead of hiding it, just honestly say you have no liquidity in your order books. You’re literally deceiving users. And what will happen next time if someone gets liquidated?” he wrote.
Similar comments came from other community members. One of them compared the removal of the wick to an attempt to rewrite events.
“Removing the candle from the chart is an attempt to ‘erase history’ and pretend nothing happened. This undermines trust in the displayed data. And the explanation like ‘it’s just a bot’ is a convenient way not to discuss the real problem: the lack of liquidity, because of which even medium orders move the market,” Hyperliquid Daily wrote.
Although there were indeed no automatic liquidations, the jump itself reportedly caused panic among traders. Some closed positions at a loss to avoid liquidation, others may have managed to profit from the distorted price movement.
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On Tuesday morning, the HYPE token was trading around $47.8. The chart on Lighter already shows a ‘clean’ line, with no trace of the recent spike. But the incident itself has again raised questions about liquidity and transparency on decentralized platforms. Whether this will harm trust in Lighter or, on the contrary, become a reason for improvements — time will tell.
