Lighter, a decentralised protocol built for perpetual derivatives trading, has completed a $68 million funding round led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Haun Ventures and Robinhood Markets. The new capital values the company at around $1.5 billion.
Founded by Vladimir Novakovski, Lighter operates a layer-2 exchange offering zero-fee perpetual futures trading on Ethereum, complete with on-chain proof of order matching and liquidations.
According to recent data, the platform achieved monthly volumes in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
Funding Fuels Growth At Pivotal Moment
With this infusion of capital, Lighter plans to deepen its institutional-grade infrastructure, expand into additional blockchains, and roll out spot-trading features alongside its core derivatives business.
The company emphasises that its architecture is built for both retail and professional users, aiming to bridge decentralised finance with financial-markets execution standards.
The backing of Robinhood is particularly notable, given the brokerage’s relative rarity in direct venture-capital deals. With retail-trading platforms increasingly looking at crypto infrastructure, Lighter may be riding the tailwind of both on-chain growth and mainstream investor interest.
DeFi And Market Infrastructure
This round shows a shift in investor sentiment: from speculative token bets toward infrastructure with measurable volumes and clear utility.
For the DeFi ecosystem, platforms like Lighter represent a maturation of the space, moving from early decentralised exchanges toward high-throughput, institutional-ready systems.
Lighter’s ambition also highlights a key inflection point in crypto markets: derivatives, rather than just spot trading, are emerging as a major battleground.
The ability to offer advanced products, deep liquidity and compliance strength will increasingly separate high-potential protocols from the rest.
However, execution will be critical. Building infrastructure that handles extreme scale, regulatory compliance and institutional workflows is non-trivial. Lighter will need to prove that it can deliver reliability, transparency, and user trust at the levels implied by its valuation.
With a $68 million raise and strong institutional backing, Lighter is positioning itself as one of the next-generation infrastructure plays in decentralised finance.
The question ahead is whether it can convert this momentum into sustainable growth, broaden its user base, and navigate the regulatory and operational challenges that lie ahead.
