The perpetuals race has a brand new entrant in open beta. Lighter has opened its public mainnet after roughly eight months in non-public testing, positioning itself as an Ethereum-settled different to the present leaders.
Below the hood, Lighter is a zk-rollup purpose-built for perps. A centralized sequencer batches orders, however state transitions — price-time-priority matching, liquidations, funding and danger checks — are verified by customized zero-knowledge circuits. Ethereum good contracts custody person funds, monitor the canonical state root, and advance state solely after a proof verifies on L1. If the sequencer stalls or censors, customers can submit precedence operations on-chain or exit through an emergency “Desert Mode” that depends on Ethereum information.
That safety posture contrasts with Hyperliquid, which runs its personal layer-1 secured by its validator set, and with Aster, which at present operates on BNB Chain as a smart-contract. Lighter’s pitch: centralized-style efficiency, with settlement and finality anchored to Ethereum and equity enforced by zk proofs.
Lighter can be diverging on charges. Retail merchants utilizing the entrance finish pay no buying and selling charges, whereas API and high-frequency circulate is charged. The group says it has enabled automated guidelines to discourage wash-trading and Sybil exercise, an try to preserve factors farming from dominating conduct.
Loading Tweet..

