We are in Singapore at Token 2049. Joining me is Vladimir Novakovski, Founder and CEO of Lighter — a decentralised exchange built to make trading fast, transparent, and verifiable. Vlad, thank you very much for joining us on Fintech TV.
Thanks for having me.
What shift are you seeing in decentralised exchanges right now and what is driving it?
A lot of the innovation is now happening on decentralised rails. Last year there was not much with RWA perps or spot — starting in Q1 and Q2 of this year that was rolled out. The decentralised venues led that. Centralised exchanges followed later. In terms of new types of assets, new strategies around margin and collateral — a lot of the innovation is really happening on decentralised rails right now. And that is what is driving the growth.
What did you see in the market that was missing when you started Lighter?
We started working on Lighter four years ago and actually launched the testnet two years ago here at this event. The thesis was always the same — can we use the technologies of Ethereum with zero-knowledge proofs to build something that is low cost and low latency, which are table stakes for most forms of trading, but do it in a way that is verifiable, secure, and composable? That was the gap we saw. At this point we are the venue that is the lowest cost and the lowest latency running on decentralised rails.
What is your main advantage over other platforms?
Across all the dimensions I mentioned we are the strongest. But where we are significantly stronger is on the latency side — our latency is in the tens of milliseconds, as opposed to 500 plus milliseconds on some competing platforms. And on the verifiability side — every single order that goes through Lighter is matched in a way where time, price, and priority are respected, and there is a proof of that posted on Ethereum. Those two things are pretty unique.
When you say trade matching and liquidations are verifiable — how does that actually protect traders?
Whether you are an institution, a retail trader, or anybody in between — you know for sure that your trading activity will be treated fairly and transparently according to rules that are open source. It is not possible for the algorithm to match one market maker differently from another or give preference to an institution over the small guys. All the rules are fully transparent and they have to be followed. If even one order out of hundreds of millions of orders is not executed correctly, the system waits until that problem is fixed.
What happens when markets get volatile?
The more stress on the market, the more verifiability matters. If there are huge liquidations happening, knowing that they were executed correctly can mean the difference between losing 2% and 3%. Making sure everything happened correctly and fairly matters even more when markets are volatile.
What developments at Lighter are you most excited about right now?
The big project we are really pushing out this quarter is options — starting with binary options and leading up to full European options on-chain, which can run on the same balance sheet as perpetuals. So you could do spot, options, and perpetuals all together — not only creating a lot of liquidity for those products individually, but enabling composite strategies like basis trading, delta hedging, and more.
What is the next big milestone for Lighter?
We are a US company and we are getting US customers — being the first on-chain venue to get a CFTC licence would be a huge milestone. And of course launching options and continuing to grow liquidity and launch new products along the way.
Thank you very much for coming on Fintech TV, Vlad.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
