Lighter Rises to Top Perp DEX by Volume, Reveals $68M Raise

Lighter, a decentralized exchange (DEX) and blockchain platform, has raised $68 million in a new funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital. The funding round announcement came as Lighter pushed to the top of perpetual futures-focused DEXs, outpacing rivals Hyperliquid and Aster.

According to data from DefiLlama, the platform is now the largest decentralized perp exchange by trading volume on the daily and weekly timeframes, with roughly $11.2 billion in daily and more than $67.7 in weekly turnover. Over the past 30 days, Lighter is in second place with $284 billion in perpetual swaps trading volume, following Aster’s $313.3 billion.

According to a Fortune report, the fresh funding round also saw participation from Haun Ventures and Robinhood, valuing the company at about $1.5 billion.

The fundraising comes amid growing momentum for decentralized perpetuals as a sector this year, which saw trading volumes surge past $1 trillion in September, a record high and nearly 50% above August levels, as The Defiant previously reported.

The sector was previously dominated by Hyperliquid, since the launch of its native token last November, but in recent months, competitors Lighter and Aster have been on the rise.

Lighter operates as both a decentralized exchange on its own custom ZK rollup, a type of EthereumLayer 2 network. Novakovski, the project’s founder, told Fortune that Lighter plans to expand into spot trading for major assets such as Bitcoin, though the exact timeframe for the move remains unclear.

Lighter’s Rise

Founded in 2022 by former AI entrepreneur Vladimir Novakovski, Lighter launched its private beta in January this year and has quickly risen to the top of the decentralized perpetuals trading market, thanks in part to its current fee structure. Standard accounts on the platform don’t incur taker or maker fees, so retail users can trade across all markets without costs.

By September, Lighter crossed $350 million in total value locked, and is at $1.1 billion today, representing more than a 1,400% increase from January.

However, Lighter’s path to the top hasn’t always been smooth. The platform launched its public mainnet on Oct. 1, after eight months of private beta testing, only to face a major outage just nine days later during the Oct. 10 market crash, one of the sharpest in recent crypto history.

The team later admitted its systems couldn’t handle the traffic surge and said it would upgrade database capacity. Traders affected by the outage, which led to about $50 million in losses, were compensated with “Lighter points” that can be exchanged for a future token airdrop.