Lighter exchange profile

Lighter is an order-book trading protocol with separate global and Robinhood Chain deployments. Its main distinguishing feature is a system of cryptographic checks over matching and liquidation, combined with a sequencer that handles orders before final settlement. Traders still need to assess the specific deployment, collateral, market and account tier: these determine the available products and execution conditions.[1]

perpRFQ appears for eligible large or difficult orders: for example, at least US$10,000 notional with estimated slippage above 0.1%, an incompletely fillable book, or at least US$500,000 notional. Market makers have ten seconds to respond and can change pricing before execution; the user has a two-minute execution window. Standard accounts incur the documented one-basis-point points charge. This is a separate condition from ordinary zero-commission trading.[9]

Binary markets accept market and limit orders, but not reduce-only, stop or TWAP orders. Trading ends at the event deadline; outstanding orders are cancelled at settlement and payouts enter the USDC account balance. If the outcome cannot be determined, the documented fallback pays 0.50 USDC per share to both sides. The event identifier, measurement window and price source therefore matter as much as the asset ticker.[13]

Robinhood Chain uses a different Premium schedule based on 14-day volume: 0.0120% maker and 0.0350% taker below US$1 million, falling to 0.0084% / 0.0245% above US$500 million. Standard remains 0% / 0%; Plus is 0.005% / 0.005%. Standard maker and cancellation delays are 200 ms there. Global staking discounts must not be applied to this deployment.[35]

Binary options have their own formula: market rate × account multiplier × shares × Up price × (1 − Up price). The published Up/Down maximum is 0% maker and 1% taker; the effective amount varies by fill price. For an illustrative 200-share taker fill at 0.50, without discounts, the fee is 0.50 USDC. Fourteen-day binary volume and LIT staking discounts multiply together; approved integrator charges are additional and do not inherit those discounts.[12]

Perpetual funding transfers value between longs and shorts each hour under the current general schedule. Positive funding means longs pay shorts; negative funding reverses the direction. Lighter does not retain a share of that payment. Rates can change between intervals, so a zero execution fee does not establish the cost of holding a leveraged position overnight. The contract configuration remains the authority for a market’s interval.[17]

LIT Fee Credits purchase access to fee and latency tiers for a selected duration with an upfront LIT payment and wallet signature. They are not a cash deposit or a withdrawable signup bonus. Separately, the LIT staking page currently quotes 6% APR in its rewards program, a three-day unstaking lockup and LLP capacity of 10 USDC for every 1 LIT staked. Token price changes and protocol risk can outweigh the stated reward rate.[4][21]

Robinhood Chain uses USDG collateral and its own contract or persistent intent address; the documented deposit minimum is 1 USDG equivalent and fast withdrawals are USDG-only with a 1 USDG minimum. Accounts, balances, keys and nonces do not carry over from global Lighter. Its REST host is api.rh.lighter.xyz.[35]

USDC is the global base collateral. In a UTA, eligible ETH and XAUT collateral currently has 70% loan-to-value recognition, an 85% liquidation threshold and a collateral-liquidation fee of up to 2%. The launch notice limits non-USDC collateral to perpetuals; spot collateral support is described as forthcoming. Robinhood Chain has a separate stock-token collateral table. A displayed token value therefore does not equal usable margin or immediately withdrawable value.[16]

Total Account Value combines collateral and unrealised profit or loss; it is not a promise that the same amount can be withdrawn while positions remain open. Marked PnL moves before a trade is closed, while realised trading results and funding update the account. Reducing collateral or transferring it away can therefore change liquidation exposure even without placing a new trade.[18]

Global collateral sits in Ethereum contracts. A sequencer provides initial order processing; batches and proofs subsequently update the onchain state, with compressed data posted through Ethereum blobs. The architecture describes an escape process after a sequencer fails to serve required priority operations: the contract can freeze and users reconstruct account proofs from published data. This is a conditional recovery mechanism with technical requirements, rather than an instant withdrawal guarantee.[2]

The liquidation engine distinguishes initial, maintenance and close-out margin. Partial liquidation cancels orders and attempts immediate reductions; successful liquidation can allocate up to 1% to LLP. Below close-out conditions, LLP may take over positions if it has capacity. If losses cannot be absorbed, auto-deleveraging can reduce profitable opposing positions. Isolated positions are assessed against their allocated collateral; cross-margin losses can affect the shared account.[14]

LLP is described as an insurance fund, but it operates as a trading and liquidation backstop. Its strategy allocations have separate collateral limits; depletion of a bucket can lead to ADL for that allocation. No reviewed source establishes a personal insurance policy, named policyholder entitlement, per-customer insured limit or statutory compensation protection for an LLP participant.[15]

Liquidation marking differs from the last fill: the documented mark combines an impact-price measure, an index-plus-premium measure and external exchange marks. Index inputs use designated oracle providers. A stop trigger, an unrealised-PnL display and an executable order-book quote can consequently show different prices without referring to the same operation.[19]

The global interface terms exclude multiple jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, China and Russia, and impose sanctions restrictions. The complete current list matters; an accessible website or connected wallet does not establish eligibility to trade.[27]

Robinhood Chain has its own explicit restricted-region list for perpetuals and points. Besides the US, UK and Canada, it includes Switzerland, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and other named jurisdictions. Program activity is reviewed continuously; points can be reduced, reversed or removed after initially appearing. This deployment should therefore be checked independently of global Lighter access.[24]

The normal account relationship starts with an Ethereum wallet and account-specific signing keys. Connecting a wallet identifies an address; approving a key or signing a trade, transfer, withdrawal or integrator fee authorises a different action. Wallet-based onboarding should not be read as a promise that every user, third-party access route or future compliance review will require no identification.[20]

On the review date, the status page reported services online. Support tickets do not replace a signed order cancellation or a contract withdrawal. The security policy covers Lighter-operated web, mobile, API and backend systems, while third-party wallet and infrastructure issues can fall outside that scope. It describes discretionary rewards rather than a standing public bug-bounty entitlement.[37][25]

The reviewed terms identify Elliot Technologies, Inc. as the interface/API provider. They do not establish a financial-services authorisation or compensation scheme for the trading protocol. Crypto balances are expressly outside bank-deposit and FDIC protection. The interface terms select Florida law and individual JAMS arbitration in Miami, subject to applicable legal limits.[27]

Elliot Technologies, Inc. is the named contractual provider; a corporate incorporation jurisdiction was not independently established from these terms. Global and Robinhood deployments share software conventions but have different environments and balances. Global signing uses chain identifier 304; Robinhood signing uses 466324. These are protocol signing identifiers, not interchangeable wallet-network settings.[27][33]

The historical-data service dates global mainnet trading records to 17 January 2025. The points documentation marks the end of Season 1/private-beta distribution on 30 September 2025. Current documentation also contains spot, binary-options and multi-asset-margin products, making older perpetual-only descriptions incomplete. The audit directory publishes separate contract and circuit reports; their presence does not by itself verify identical coverage across both deployments.[31][23][26]

Operator

Elliot Technologies, Inc. (interface/API provider)

Exchange model

Decentralised

Service scope

Global and Robinhood deployments; spot, perpetuals, binary options and optional pools.

Client types

Retail clients; Professional clients

Pricing publication

Public pricing

Pricing scope

Account-tier fees; binary options and Robinhood schedules differ.

Funding scope

Global USDC/Ethereum routes; Robinhood USDG routes are separate.

Custody and asset handling

Smart-contract collateral and wallet authority; sequencer, settlement and liquidation dependencies.

Client eligibility

Deployment-specific geographic and sanctions restrictions.

Support

Official Discord tickets, system status and security email.

Authorisation and registration scope

Interface provider identified; no financial licence or compensation scheme established in reviewed sources.

Exchange metadata checked 20 Oct 2026Source 27Source 1Source 37Source 2Source 11Source 21Source 33Source 24Source 35Source 3Source 12Source 28Source 25

Historical REST records include trades, inactive orders, funding, liquidations, PnL and asset movements. CSV export covers up to twelve months of trades or three months of funding payments for one account index. Main and sub-accounts therefore need separate reconciliation. A trading-history export is not a complete tax return: wallet transfers, conversions and activity outside the selected account also need to be accounted for.[31]

Lighter’s agent guide is for building software integrations. It tells implementations to confirm execution after submission, check status and nonces before retrying an uncertain result, and use read-only credentials for data-only tasks. A successful submission response is not a fill. The guide’s order-expiry range is five minutes to thirty days, with a distinct IOC convention. No reviewed material establishes a discretionary AI account manager acting for every customer.[34]

To stop an automated strategy, the user needs to stop new submissions, revoke or replace the relevant authority, and separately review resting orders, positions and pool shares. A pool participant exits through share redemption; the public-pool guide describes no lockup, but redemption is still a protocol action and profit fees are deducted. Closing the app alone does not remove market exposure.[10]

Referral rebates and kickbacks are discretionary weekly L2 transfers, subject to a US$1 payout minimum and anti-abuse rules. The published program offers a 10% fee rebate to qualifying referred users and tiered referrer kickbacks; referral attribution cannot be changed after signup. Treat an earned token rebate separately from a promise of withdrawable cash or from points whose eventual value has not been established.[22]