LIT has surged nearly fivefold from its March low as Lighter expands its perpetual futures infrastructure through Telegram and Robinhood-linked channels, while its founder joins a new U.S. derivatives-policy forum examining how decentralized exchanges could operate under American rules.
The token rose from $0.7794 in March to a five-month high of $3.79, according to market figures cited by Lighter. It gained 75% over 30 days and 24% over the past week, taking its market capitalization to about $865 million and placing it 76th among cryptocurrencies by market value.
The rally accelerated after South Korea’s Upbit introduced a Korean won trading pair for LIT on Aug. 24. LIT rose 22% on the day of the listing, adding a major local-currency market for one of Asia’s most active crypto trading communities.
Lighter’s case differs from many decentralized-finance token projects because the company behind it is registered in Delaware and the token is issued directly by a U.S. C corporation. That structure places the project closer to the U.S. legal system as regulators increasingly examine whether decentralized trading platforms can meet standards for market integrity, customer protections and surveillance.
Telegram and Robinhood expand Lighter’s reach
Lighter’s distribution strategy began to take shape in April, when perpetual contracts became available inside a Telegram wallet. The product was supplied exclusively by Lighter and connected the protocol to a wallet ecosystem with 150 million registered users, according to the project.
Perpetual contracts, commonly called perps, are derivatives that let traders take long or short positions without a fixed expiry date. They dominate crypto derivatives activity, but much of that market has historically been concentrated on centralized trading venues.
Lighter followed the Telegram rollout with a July 1 deployment on Robinhood Chain, an Ethereum layer-2 network built with Arbitrum technology. Perpetuals on the network use Lighter’s matching and trading infrastructure, while revenue is divided equally between the two companies.
Robinhood Chain runs 100-millisecond block times, has no native token and settles transaction fees in ETH. The chain’s Lighter-powered markets operate through a separate order book called Lighter Domains, rather than through Lighter’s main exchange venue.
The distinction affects how users trade. The Robinhood Chain product uses USDG as its collateral and quote asset, while Lighter’s primary venue uses USDC. Separate pools of collateral and separate order books can create different pricing and liquidity conditions between the venues, especially during volatile periods.
Access through Robinhood’s wallet excludes users in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and Singapore. The geographic restrictions show the limits of the current launch even as Robinhood-linked distribution potentially broadens Lighter’s retail reach outside those markets.
Lighter also maintains zero maker and taker fees across 241 retail markets. Maker fees apply to orders that add liquidity to an order book, while taker fees apply to orders that immediately execute against existing orders. Removing both fees can attract activity, although liquidity providers and the protocol must still address execution quality, funding mechanics and market risk.
Founder joins CFTC advisory group
Vladimir Novakovski, Lighter’s founder, attended the first meeting of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Innovation Advisory Committee on Aug. 20. The committee discussed design standards that a decentralized exchange would need to satisfy to operate legally in the United States.
Novakovski and Vlad Tenev, chief executive officer of Robinhood, both sit on the committee. Their participation comes as Lighter works toward what it describes as a decentralized perpetuals license that could cover its own interface as well as broker integrations.
The regulatory question is especially relevant for a protocol offering leveraged derivatives. A decentralized order book may reduce reliance on a conventional exchange operator, but U.S. regulators have repeatedly focused on whether a platform can prevent market manipulation, manage liquidations, monitor trading activity and apply customer-access controls.
Lighter was developed following the major crypto failures of 2022, including the collapse of Terra’s Luna ecosystem in May and FTX’s bankruptcy in November. Its technical approach centers on zero-knowledge proofs, cryptographic proofs that allow a system to demonstrate a calculation was performed correctly without publicly revealing all of the underlying data.
Lighter uses that model to verify matched trades. The aim is to provide auditable execution while retaining the speed and order-book structure expected in derivatives trading. Novakovski has said that on-chain perpetuals accounted for roughly 1% of the overall perps market when Lighter began, and represented between 10% and 20% this year.
The project reported about $1.08 billion in open interest on its main protocol, more than 1.66 million daily transactions and over $37 billion in trading volume over the past 30 days. Open interest measures the total value of outstanding derivatives positions, making it a useful indicator of how much capital is committed to a market beyond completed trading volume.
Funding and long-standing Robinhood links
Lighter raised $68 million in November 2025 at a $1.5 billion valuation. Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital led the round, with Haun Ventures and Robinhood Ventures also participating.
Novakovski and Tenev have known each other for 25 years, beginning at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia. Novakovski later advised Tenev during Robinhood’s early formation, including when the project was known as Cash Cat.
Before founding Lighter, Novakovski worked in traditional finance and technology. After entering Harvard at 16 and leaving two years later, he joined Citadel after being recruited by founder Ken Griffin. He later spent seven years at Graham Capital, where he became a portfolio manager and director, and subsequently served as vice president of engineering at Addepar.
His later startup, Lunchclub, raised a $4 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2019 and a $24.2 million Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in 2020, with Coatue participating.
Lighter’s challenge now is to convert its expanding distribution into durable liquidity across separate trading venues while navigating the legal requirements discussed at the CFTC. The Robinhood Chain integration gives the protocol a route into a large consumer-facing ecosystem, but the exclusions from major jurisdictions and the complexity of decentralized derivatives regulation mean its next stage will depend as much on compliant market design as on token momentum.
For deeper insight into perpetuals and derivatives behind LIT’s surge, explore our guide on crypto derivatives today.
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