Why $LITKEY is a Community Launch
After five years of building Lit Protocol, the network now supports hundreds of ecosystem teams, manages over $420M in assets with signing requests by 45% month over month. In preparing to launch Lit V1 and $LITKEY, we went back to first principles to design a transparent and mission aligned token launch.
The question we asked ourselves was simple: what kind of token launch and economic model best serves our mission to empower builders through decentralized key management? This isn’t about following an established playbook, the goal is creating long-term alignment from day one.
On October 30, 2025 at 00:00 UTC, $LITKEY, the Lit Protocol network token, will be the second Community Token Launch on Aerodrome.
As of today, the LITKEY/WETH pool has been seeded and veAERO voters are able to vote towards the pool. At the time of the token launch, that liquidity pool for LITKEY will be bootstrapped by the community. If you’re a veAero holder, you can vote on the $LITKEY pool now.
This post shares our perspective on tokenized networks and why a veAero Community Launch is the right foundation for $LITKEY, the Lit Protocol network token.
Infrastructure in the Open
What makes decentralized networks different is their transparency.
Traditional companies hide their operations behind closed doors — private cap tables, proprietary code, and internal decision-making. You might use their product, but you’ll never see how it works or influence its direction.
Decentralized systems flip that model. The infrastructure is exposed.
Anyone can see the code, observe the markets, and participate in governance. You can visit a page on the web to understand how a network operates, join discussions about its future, and directly shape its economics.
This is what a tokenized network really is: a service rebuilt as a public utility.
Lit Protocol provides the fundamental capability of programmable secret management as a decentralized, public utility.
For Lit Protocol, a community launch makes sense for a deep reason: it lets the market value what’s already real.
Lit isn’t launching on promises, the network has nearly half a billions dollars in assets under management, proven infrastructure, quickly growing usage, an ever expanding ecosystem, an automation platform, and fundamentally, a unique solution to decentralized key management offered no where else.
The community launch isn’t just philosophically aligned with decentralization; it’s the most transparent and fair way to price a network that’s already generating value and solving problems others haven’t.
Community-Led Price Discovery
The $LITKEY Community Launch on Aerodrome enables price discovery through open markets. Here’s how it works:
- Starting today, a LITKEY/WETH pool will be seeded on Aerodrome on Base. LITKEY tokens will be deposited as incentives and veAERO voters will vote to direct Aerodrome emissions toward the pool.
- On October 30, 2025 at 00:00 UTC, the LITKEY / WETH pool will officially launch. Members of the community will be able to provide liquidity to the pool, helping build the market from the bottom up.
- With Coinbase’s DEX integration, the LITKEY token will be made accessible to millions of users on Coinbase.
This approach brings the community in on day one as equal participants in the process of price discovery. As the second Community Launch (aka Aero Ignition), there are few things this launch will be doing differently.
First, the Lit Protocol team will not be coordinating any CEX listings until one week following the launch of the initial pool on Aerodrome. Second, the Lit Protocol team plans to provide liquidity on a small and limited scale, after the price is established.
From Ignition to Autonomy
The $LITKEY Community Launch marks the next step toward activating a fully autonomous key management mesh.
After the token is live, the next phase of will commence with the Staking Contest, where node operators compete to establish their position in the genesis node operator set. After the contest is over and the genesis operator set has been selected, the Lit v1 Mainnet (Naga) will officially launch through the Distributed Key Generation (DKG) process — the moment when the network’s keys are created. This is a core step that enables the signing network to run on distributed cryptographic infrastructure, not centralized authority.
Once v1 is live, the veLITKEY governance model will go into effect. $LITKEY stakers will gain control over 25% of all tokens and will be able to direct emissions toward ecosystem growth and the expansion of new Lit Realms while earning network fees. You can join the discussion on veLITKEY here.
The veLITKEY model is driven by three revenue stream for Lit Protocol, which are direct network usage where builders pay for signing, encryption, compute, the Vincent platform that charges a nominal fee of swaps and performance, and Realm expansion as third parties setup their own Lit Protocol networks.
A Fourth Layer of Digital Authority
Lit Protocol is a foundational network that introduces a new kind of authority on the web. Before Lit Protocol, control over keys and secrets exists in three forms:
- Individual: you manage them yourself and can have your own system.
- Corporate: you hand them to a company for greater functionality, but at the cost of control.
- State: you rely on national infrastructure to safeguard critical information.
Lit Protocol introduces a fourth layer: the network.
Shared keys, distributed infrastructure, and programmable autonomy that anyone can join.This layer enables collective coordination without surrendering control for builders, blockchains, network states, and consortiums alike.
Lit Protocol provides cryptographic guarantees without centralized intermediaries and that’s what $LITKEY represents: a new layer of authority for the internet, powered by decentralized keys.
Next Steps
The LITKEY Community Launch starts today with the initial LITKEY / WETH pool seeded on Aerodrome. If you’re a veAERO holder, you will be able to vote towards the pool starting now: https://aerodrome.finance/vote
On October 30th at 00:00 UTC, the $LITKEY Community Launch will officially begin, followed by coordinated exchange listings one week later.
Explore more:
Vote for $LITKEY (For veAero Holders)
$LITKEY Tokenomics
Build on Lit Protocol
Join the community
Watch interviews with ecosystem builders