when jez originally told me about lighter in march i was pretty skeptical about anything competing with HL. after dydx's success hundreds of competitors were spun up in late 2022 almost all of which failed, so i doubted this time would be different for challengers to HL. despite that he told me i should deposit to LLP regardless because the yield was so high. back in march the deposit caps were 25k per wallet, 50% of which could be deposited into LLP. luckily for me, lighter was hosting a trading competition with a grand prize of 15k points and 1k USDC (lol) so i took a shot at winning it using the remaining 12.5k i didnt dump into LLP

bragging aside i was really impressed by the experience trading on lighter, my worry was that the no fees pitch was hiding bad liquidity and higher latency but that wasnt the case. The top of book liquidity even back then was fine and the latency was comparable to most cex frontends and HL. This makes the no fees part of lighter really exciting to me. I started trading crypto when one of the most common ways to run up your nw was leverage trading btc, which is much harder now as volatility compressed and the asset matured. to get the same returns with smaller moves traders need to size up + pay more fees, which makes trading btc quite expensive. lighter has done a fantastic job of making majors and btc especially much cheaper to scalp ltf with good liquidity, and i think this new no fees model is a massive win for perp traders.

I always assumed a no fee model would be unprofitable for anyone to offer but revenue from premium accounts + liquidation bonuses and MMing profits to LLP more than justifies the high otc market valuation. more traders switch to lighter for no fees -> more toxic flow -> more profitable for MMs to quote on premium accounts while paying fees. It’s a cool flywheel.

the perps market is by far the most profitable business to come out of crypto and I’m very excited to see a new competitor try something different