Quick take:
- The round brings the total raised to nearly $90 million, following a $21 million unreported funding in 2024 led by Haun Ventures and Craft Ventures.
- Lighter operates a custom layer-2 exchange on Ethereum, which focuses on verifiable matching and liquidations.
- The Perp DEX platform was developed by Vladimir Novakovski, who graduated from Harvard at 18 years and worked as an engineer at Citadel.
Lighter, the decentralized perpetual futures trading platform, has raised $68 million in a funding round co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Haun Ventures and Robinhood.
According to the report by Fortune, the fundraising brings the total raised to nearly $90 million, following an unreported $21 million funding round in 2024, led by Haun Ventures and Craft Ventures.
The funding was raised at a valuation of $1.5 billion, highlighting the rising popularity of decentralised perpetual trading platforms, with the market leader (by all-time transaction volume), Hyperliquid, being valued at a whopping $40 billion in October.
Lighter has emerged as a close rival to Hyperliquid in recent months, with its 30-day transaction volume of $279 billion putting it above Hyperliquid’s $266 billion, according to DeFiLlama data.
Lighter’s rapid growth is partially driven by its approach to perpetual futures trading, as it uses dark pools. Developed by Vladimir Novakovski, a Harvard prodigy and former Citadel engineer, its custom layer-2 on Ethereum focuses on verifiable matching and liquidations.
When asked about how his product compares to Hyperliquid, Novakovski said: “We’re pretty happy about our position right now,” adding, “but we’re working hard.” He also said that Lighter is “already profitable,” according to Fortune.
“What we want to do is to be the infrastructure layer that verifies that everything that happens in finance happens fairly, happens correctly, happens transparently,” Novakovski said.
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