Crypto derivatives startup Lighter has closed a $68 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation ahead of its token generation event, backed by high-profile investors including Founders Fund, Ribbit Capital, Haun Ventures and Robinhood Markets, according to a Fortune report.
Founded by Vladimir Novakovski, Lighter is a zk-rollup perpetual futures exchange built on Ethereum, offering zero fees for retail users and advanced on-chain testing for order matching and settlement.
DefiLlama data shows that Lighter has recorded a 30-day perpetual trading volume of $279.5 billion, with a 24-hour volume of $10.7 billion and open interest of around $1.7 billion. The total value locked (TVL) also amounts to $1.15 billion.
The funding round will support the expansion of the platform’s institutional offering, improved infrastructure for low-latency trading, and a full public launch. Lighter aims to challenge the increasingly competitive decentralized derivatives exchange sector, which includes Hyperliquid and Aster.
Lighter says it will deploy derivatives on additional chains, deepen liquidity pools and introduce monetization models for institutional counterparties, while retail order flow will remain commission-free.
“Vlad and the team he’s built are 85% to 90% of the reason we made the investment,” Joey Krug, a partner at Founders Fund, told Fortune.
Lighter did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for further comment.
UPDATE (November 11, 16:13 UTC): Adds “:Report” to the title and CoinDesk has reached out to Lighter for additional comment.
