Welcome back to Market Movers. The opening bell lighter is a zero fee, high speed Ethereum perpetual decentralized derivatives exchange with on chain security. I spoke to company CEO Vladimir Novakovski to hear about Lighter’s Zero Knowledge rollup technology and its integration on Robinhood Chain. Take a look.
Failed to advance in the Senate with the bill’s 2026 passage. Chance is now confirmed to be a long shot. The industry is now looking to the nation's regulators to help drive Wall Street capital into DeFi, while perpetual futures drive the vast majority of crypto trading volume. But investors have long faced a tradeoff between centralized speed as well as non custodial security.
Lighter is eliminating that compromise, and it is a high performance decentralized exchange, bringing a fast central limit order book experience to on chain derivatives by deploying zero knowledge proofs. Lighter mathematically proves every match and liquidation is executed fairly, eliminating front running and fake volume at the protocol level.
Well, joining us to weigh in is Vladimir Novakowski, CEO of Lighter. Great to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me.
Good to be here.
Well, we did see that failure of that cloture vote for Clarity in the Senate. But that aftermath, give us your take on where you stand and whether you think that what we have from the tools of the SEC and CFTC are enough for your organization right now.
Yeah. You know, I think the bill was trying to accomplish a lot of different things, you know, in one package. And it was close, but it didn't make it over the line. But we think a lot of the components in there are going to make their way through either with, as you said, SEC, CFTC kind of working on rules or kind of more piecemeal pieces of legislation.
I think, you know, we've been working particularly closely with CFTC. I'm also part of their Innovation Advisory Committee, which met for the first time three weeks ago. And, you know, there was a lot of consensus there between kind of the DeFi players like us, some of the more traditional crypto players, as well as traditional exchanges about innovation and, you know, how to think about bringing perpetual and on chain markets to the U.S.
And so we're kind of pushing fully ahead on this. And the CFTC has been really open to innovative approaches here.
And Vlad, you mentioned perps. And that is an area many of us are paying attention to right now. So when it comes to Lighter, what are you looking at not just in the next year ahead? What do you expect when it comes to, say, several years from now?
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, perps have become a tool that's used a lot on the retail side, offshore. I think, you know, bringing perps onshore in ways that are robust and verifiable. I think you mentioned some of our tech like institutions and regulators really like the verifiability aspect of it, where every trade, every liquidation, every order, there's a proof of it.
And so I think having perps here, you know, we're kind of in the heart of New York right now. I mean, I think folks like some of the biggest trading firms here, you know, would trade and market make in the U.S. once the regulations are clear on this, and we're close to that. And so I think perps will become a tool that's used for derivatives trading in a significant way.
But it's not the only tool, right? We're also working on options there. You know, I think our tech supports data futures as well. For markets like compute, those actually might make more sense, right? Because there are specific costs to hedge if you're running a data center or trying to hedge compute.
On the other hand, if you're betting on the price of Bitcoin, a perp is a great tool for that. So we view this as kind of a bunch of different tools in the financial toolkit of derivatives that, when especially when they all can work together and share the same balance sheet and be regulated with institutional liquidity, it's all going to expand capital efficiency.
And Vlad, as you mentioned, you and I are sitting here on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and I don't think you can get as far as the New York Stock Exchange. But we all know that intersection between TradFi and DeFi has been merging. So for the layperson who is watching right now, how would you explain the business model of Lighter?
Well, the business model of Lighter is one where we really focus a lot on the consumer, on the retail trader, and it's zero fees for them. The way Lighter monetizes is from so called premium accounts, which are mostly like professional market makers or institutions trading, you know, kind of strategies that are very latency sensitive if you're just looking to put on a trade.
You know, go long Bitcoin for the next day. It would be free to do that, right? Or I think if you're running a complex market making strategy where you're executing 10,000 trades, 10,000 trades a day or whatnot, there are fees associated with that and different fee tiers. So that's the business model.
The nice thing about the way we've implemented it is it's all on chain. It's all transparent. There are no hidden deals between liquidity providers or anybody else. And in fact, you know,
all the activity on the exchange is verifiable, right? So every single, you know, we process like 500 million orders a day. Right now, every single one of those orders is matched with kind of time price priority. And there's a proof of all of that happening correctly that's posted on Ethereum. So Ethereum is kind of the most secure L1 that you can build on.
I think, you know, it's like if you compare it to something as ubiquitous as the internet, right? It's been kind of up and running for over a decade without any failures. And so, you know, Ethereum as a security layer creates a lot of trust in a system like Lighter built on top of it. Because even if something goes wrong with our system, customers can always get their assets back from Ethereum, which is really comforting to institutions and retail traders alike.
And while I have it here, I do want to ask you about Lighter's recent partnership with Robinhood. There's been a lot of buzz around that integration. So what is the roadmap for that collab?
Yeah, well, Robinhood is very focused on innovation, right? Like, they've launched their chain. And as part of that, the Robinhood wallet now offers perps where we're the exclusive partner for that. So that product is, for the moment, open to customers outside the U.S. You know, we're kind of working on bringing that into the U.S. with them, as well as kind of working with Robinhood on other aspects of their ecosystem where Lighter can add value, as you said, where DeFi meets TradFi, right?
But, you know, I think they understand the value of DeFi very strongly. And I think we've seen that now with the launch of their chain and how successful that's been, both with what we're doing with perps and with spot trading on their chain and stock tokens, as well. I mean, I think when all these pieces fit together, like the advantages you get from DeFi is composability, capital efficiency and verifiability.
Like when all these things work together, you can really improve kind of access to capital markets for a variety of participants.
And finally, before I let you go, you mentioned the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee. So what did you actually have to say to them? From a builder perspective, and give us a little bit of insight into what other stakeholders are saying right now.
Yeah. Well, I think there were some, like I said, I think on a lot of the key points, there was actually a lot of agreement in terms of that, you know, things like perpetuals should be in the U.S., which should be regulated in smart ways. Like a lot of the rules, core principles apply, some that were created 56 years ago should be adjusted or interpreted in ways that account for kind of on chain finance.
But I think there are a lot of, there's a lot of consensus on that part, as well as thinking about AI and agentic trading that took up a lot of the discussion too. I think there are some disagreements around when we got to prediction markets in the room. And I think there are some good points made by the TradFi folks who, for example, you know, probably the compute markets should have an easier path to being listed than a prediction market of someone, you know, attending, you know, like George Sancho's attending, you know, a game, right?
I think there were some good points made by both sides. But at the end of the day, it's great to get, I think what the CFTC did an amazing job of is getting all those people together in the room and getting the discussion going well.
It sounds as though each and every one of those topics could be an hour long podcast, but we will have to leave it there for today. So I appreciate your time, Vlad. Thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you so much for sharing your perspective. Thank you.
