Lighter CEO pitches fixed income as DeFi's next growth frontier
- —Lighter launched a US10Y perpetual referencing the 10-year US Treasury with up to 20x leverage
- —The exchange runs on a custom ZK-rollup on Ethereum and uses a central limit order book model
- —It lists over 190 markets spanning crypto, equities, commodities and RWAs, capped at 20x leverage
- —Daily volume runs $1.4–1.7 billion; Lighter raised $68 million in 2025 at a $1.5 billion valuation
Why it matters: Onchain rates products give crypto-native traders direct exposure to US Treasury yields without a traditional brokerage account.
Source: Crypto Briefing