Is Lighter The Next Hyperliquid?
After Hyperliquid’s storming 2024 debut, groundbreaking token airdrop, and it’s seemingly unstoppable rise since, crypto traders have been on the lookout for a challenger. Lighter could be it.
The decentralized derivatives exchange (DEX) specializes in perpetual futures (perps), a type of derivative contract that lets traders speculate on crypto price movements.
Like an exchange-traded fund (ETF) in traditional finance, perps allow investors to gain exposure to price volatility without owning the underlying asset.
Launched in private beta this past January, Lighter positions itself as a specialist, high-performance DEX with unique capabilities. Like Hyperliquid, it aims to deliver CEX-level performance on-chain.
What makes Lighter different is its proprietary execution environment. Trades are powered by a custom zk-rollup that enables the DEX to deliver a CEX-like central limit order book (CLOB) experience.
The ability to aggregate buy and sell orders with the speed and efficiency of a traditional stock exchange has largely eluded DEX projects – but Lighter claims to have it sussed.
Closing the CEX-DEX Gap
Another differentiator is Lighter’s zero-fee option for retail traders. There’s also the Lighter Liquidity Pool (LLP), a vault that runs a market-making strategy – inviting comparisons to Hyperliquid’s HLP. Traders can deposit capital into the pool, which Lighter uses to quote and fill perp trades.
Since launch in January, Lighter has grown to more than 56,000 users and gathered a TVL of $340 million. Analysts say some of the growth is down to points farming, but given that the nascent exchange only just left beta, it’s still impressive.
Founder Vladimir Novakovski hails from an AI and FinTech background, and the project has secured backing from big tech VCs like a16z and Lightspeed Ventures.
The DEX’s monetization strategy focuses on institutional traders executing high-frequency trades – leveraging Novakovski’s earlier experience as VP of engineering at trading platform Addepar.
After its public rollout in September, Lighter plans a new feature which would give traders the flexibility to use their LLP positions as margin. That way they’ll be able to simultaneously …
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