Perp DEX Lighter Raises $68M at $1.5B Valuation

Lighter, the leading decentralized perpetual trading platform, has secured $68 million in its latest funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. This has brought its total valuation to approximately $1.5 billion.

Without revealing many details, Lighter’s CEO and founder, Vladimir Novakovski, disclosed that the proceeds from the fundraiser are earmarked for “equity and token warrants, or allocations of a yet-to-be-released cryptocurrency.” This suggests the potential launch of a native token for the Lighter ecosystem.

Lighter Raises $68M

Aside from Founders Fund, other participants in the funding round include Ribbit Capital, Haun Ventures, and Robinhood.

In its 2024 funding round, Lighter secured $21 million led by Haun Ventures and Craft Ventures. This means that the perpetual trading platform has now secured $89 million in funding from venture capital firms and other entities.

Founded in 2022, Lighter has gained prominence through its decentralized perpetual trading service. In January 2025, it launched in a private beta. Last month, its public mainnet went live. Like its rival, Hyperliquid, Lighter has a dedicated blockchain network under the same name. The difference is that, unlike Hyperliquid, which runs on a layer-1 blockchain, Lighter utilizes a layer-2 network built on top of the Ethereum mainnet.

According to on-chain data from DefiLlama, Lighter ranks as the leading perpetual exchange. It has a daily traded volume of $10.69 billion, which is substantially higher than Hyperliquid’s $8.71 billion.

Lighter does not have a native token at the time of writing. Still, the latest funding round hints at the possible debut of a token for the ecosystem.

Perp Market Captures More Attention

In recent months, the perpetual trading market has garnered massive attention from retail traders, institutions, venture capital firms, and even crypto projects. Some of the leading crypto perpetual futures trading platforms include Hyperliquid, Aster, and dYdX.

Investing nearly $70 million in Lighter has enabled these investors to gain exposure to the trending perp market.