Watch · Perp DEX / zk-rollup

Lighter LIT

MC ~$781M FDV ~$3.1B Float 25% Annualized rev ~$64M P/S ~12×

Composite61.7 #2 of 25

Buyback yield5.2% $39.9M/yr

P/S11.6× sector 12.6×

Below 1y peak4% 1.0× to reclaim

Float25% FDV $3.1B

Fwd P/S y321.1× base case

Moat61 judgement

Innovation82 judgement

Moat 61. Two real assets: its own zk chain, so it owns its latency floor like Hyperliquid, and exclusive perps distribution through Robinhood Wallet - a channel a competitor cannot simply outspend. Capped well below Hyperliquid because the moat is largely rented rather than owned: the Robinhood deal is a 50/50 revenue split with a partner that could renegotiate or in-source, and the product is barred in the US, UK, Canada, Switzerland, UAE and Singapore - which is most of Robinhood's actual user base. Its own liquidity is ~6% of Hyperliquid's run-rate.

Innovation 82. An application-specific zk-rollup that exists only to run a perps CLOB, with every match, margin check and liquidation proved by custom Plonky2 circuits posted to Ethereum. That is a genuinely different guarantee from Hyperliquid's: BFT consensus says validators agreed a fill happened; a zk proof says the fill was computed correctly. Verifiable matching is the first credible answer to 'trust the sequencer' in on-chain orderbooks.

Measured from live data, except Moat and Innovation which are hand-set judgements · snapshot 2026-08-23 · full model →

What it does

Lighter is an application-specific zk-rollup that exists for one purpose: running a central limit order book for perpetuals. Every match, margin check and liquidation is proved with custom Plonky2 circuits and posted to Ethereum. That is a materially different guarantee from every other on-chain perp venue — Hyperliquid’s BFT consensus establishes that validators agreed a fill happened, while a zk proof establishes that the fill was computed correctly. It is the first credible answer to “trust the sequencer” in on-chain orderbooks. Over $1.6T of cumulative perp volume has been settled this way.

Why it is here

Lighter is the one perp venue attacking Hyperliquid on the axis that actually matters. It runs its own chain, so it owns its latency floor rather than inheriting a general-purpose chain’s — the same structural decision Hyperliquid made. But its real weapon is not execution, it is distribution: since 1 July 2026 Lighter has been the official perps partner of Robinhood Chain, with trading happening inside Robinhood Wallet using USDG as collateral. Users never touch a DeFi interface. That does not attack Hyperliquid’s liquidity moat — it routes around it, by importing mainstream brokerage users who were never going to open a DeFi app. Distribution can bypass a liquidity moat where execution alone cannot.

Fundamentals

~$64M annualized protocol revenue on $84M of fees — a 76% take rate, among the highest in DeFi.
12× P/S against a Perp DEX sector median of ~13×, versus Hyperliquid’s ~24×.
Current 30-day run-rate ~$38M annualized, growing ~19% month-over-month while Hyperliquid declines ~4%. Still only ~6% of Hyperliquid’s run-rate.
The Robinhood adapter is already contributing a ~$5M run-rate from a standing start in roughly a month.
Raised $68M at ~$1.5B in November 2025; Robinhood Ventures participated.

Tokenomics

Revenue-funded buyback, now burned permanently. ~15.5M LIT (~6.3% of circulating supply) has been repurchased with exchange revenue since TGE, and the team has committed to burning rather than recycling it.
The burn removes roughly 30.6M LIT a year, which makes LIT net-deflationary today.
Staking launched in January with ~3.72M LIT distributed and an initial 6% target yield, subject to adjustment.
The problem: a cliff on 27 December 2026. Half of the 1B supply is held by insiders and locked until that date, then vests linearly over three years. Gross vesting of roughly 166M LIT a year runs ~5.4× the burn pace. The burn narrows dilution; it does not reverse it.

Catalysts (6–12mo)

Robinhood perps expanding into currently excluded jurisdictions would transform the addressable base overnight.
Continued month-over-month share gain against a declining incumbent.
Verifiable matching becoming a procurement requirement for institutional flow.

Risks

The December 2026 unlock cliff is the dominant risk. This is precisely the low-float / high-FDV structure that broke the 2024 vintage — 25% float, $3.1B FDV, and the token sits just 2% below its 1-year peak. It fails the first test in this report’s own macro framing: near-fully unlocked, or cliff already absorbed. LIT is neither.
The moat is rented. Robinhood takes 50% of the revenue and could renegotiate or in-source. The exclusivity is a commercial arrangement, not a structural barrier.
Geography guts the headline. Perps are unavailable in the US, UK, Canada, Switzerland, UAE and Singapore. Robinhood’s ~28M customers are overwhelmingly US, so the accessible slice is far smaller than the number implies.
Latency claims are self-reported. Hyperliquid’s ~70ms finality is independently measured and published; no equivalent third-party benchmark exists for Lighter.
Sequencer-acknowledged fills are a promise until the proof lands. Fast ack and fast finality are not the same guarantee.

Watch — wait for the cliff. The most technically credible challenger to Hyperliquid, with a distribution channel the incumbent cannot answer and a genuinely novel trust model. It is also a 25%-float token trading near its highs four months ahead of an insider unlock that vests at five times the burn rate. Both things are true. The trigger to size into is the December 2026 cliff being absorbed without the structure breaking — buying ahead of it is paying full price for the thesis and taking the dilution risk for free.

How it compares to its peers

Perp DEX	Mkt cap	Revenue/yr	Growth/yr	Bull y3 rev	P/S	Fwd P/S y3	Buyback
Hyperliquid	$17.6B	$739.2M	38%	$3.0B	23.8×	12.4×	4.2%
Asterpeer	$1.7B	—	-28%	—	—	—	—
Lighter	$766.8M	$66.2M	-27%	$36.3M	11.6×	21.1×	5.2%
dYdXpeer	$98.8M	$7.2M	-44%	$3.7M	13.7×	39.1×	7.3%
GMXpeer	$76.2M	$11.8M	-14%	$14.1M	6.5×	8.6×	11.3%

Sector median P/S is 12.6×. Lighter trades at 11.6× — below the median, worth 9% if it re-rated to it. Peer revenue growth runs at a median of -27% a year, with 4 of 5 shrinking — so this multiple sits inside a contracting sector.