What is Lighter?
Lighter is a perpetuals DEX built as a zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum. Orders are matched on a central limit order book, and the matching and liquidations are proven with zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs that Ethereum verifies.
Standard Lighter accounts pay no maker or taker fees. Lighter lists crypto perpetuals alongside perps on US stocks, stock indexes, commodities, and FX pairs, all margined from one USDC balance in a self-custodial account.
How Lighter works
Unlike an automated market maker (AMM), Lighter uses a central limit order book where traders place bids and offers. What sets it apart is how that book is checked: because it runs as a ZK rollup, the order matching and liquidations are proven with zero-knowledge proofs and those proofs are verified on Ethereum. You get order-book trading without having to take the matching engine on trust.
Your account is self-custodial. Your Ethereum wallet owns your Lighter account, which is created by your first USDC deposit, and your funds stay in that account.
Lighter fees: Standard and Premium
Lighter accounts trade on a tier, and the tier decides both what you pay and how fast you can trade.
| Tier | Maker / taker fee | Taker orders and cancels | Request limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 0% / 0% | Wait about 300 ms | 60 requests a minute |
| Premium | 0.004% / 0.028% before discounts | 140 ms taker, no cancel delay | Thousands of orders a minute |
Standard is the default tier, and its zero fees are the main draw. The trade-off is a short speed bump: taker orders, cancels and modifies wait about 300 ms, while post-only orders go straight through. A Standard account also gets 60 requests a minute, reads and writes together, and can hold up to 30 active orders in one market.
Premium pays small fees in exchange for lower latency, no cancel delay, and much higher request and order limits. That suits strategies that update orders constantly, such as a busy market maker. Lighter also has a Plus tier between the two.
Fee schedules can change, so review Lighter's current documentation before trading.
What you can trade on Lighter
Lighter lists over 200 perpetual markets. Crypto is the core set, and stock, index, commodity, and FX perps trade from the same USDC balance.
| Market type | Examples | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Crypto perps | BTC, ETH, SOL, HYPE | The core set; up to 50x on BTC and ETH |
| Stock perps | TSLA, NVDA, AAPL, META | Single US stocks |
| Index perps | US500, US100, SPY, QQQ | |
| Commodity perps | XAU, XAG, WTI, Brent oil | Metals and oil |
| FX perps | EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDJPY | Major currency pairs |
New markets are listed often. Coinner bots trade Lighter's perpetual markets, not spot.
Custody and how Coinner connects
Lighter separates your wallet from your trading keys. Your Ethereum wallet owns the account, and an API key is a separate key that trades for it. Registering an API key takes one wallet signature; after that, the key signs orders on its own.
When you connect Lighter, Coinner generates a new API key for your account and you approve it with that one signature. The key can place, cancel, and modify orders and manage leverage and margin. It cannot send funds to anyone else: transfers to an account with a different owner need your wallet's signature, and the only withdrawal the key could request goes back to your own wallet. Coinner never requests one.
Coinner always registers its key in a free slot of its own. Lighter reserves the first few key slots for its own web and mobile apps, so connecting Coinner never logs you out of the Lighter app, and Coinner's key is never shared with another tool.
Lighter referral code: COINNER
Coinner's Lighter referral code is COINNER. To open a Lighter account through Coinner, sign up with this link:
https://app.lighter.xyz/?referral=COINNER
Signing up with the link supports Coinner at no extra cost to you, and Coinner still charges no subscription or platform fee.
If your Lighter account has no referral code yet, Coinner can apply COINNER for you when you connect, but only if you tick the consent box in the connect wizard. A referral code changes how your Lighter points are shared, so it is your decision, and Coinner never applies it without asking.
How Lighter compares
- Lighter vs Arcus: compare their markets, chains, fees, account connections, and supported Coinner bots.
- dYdX vs Lighter: compare two order-book perp DEXs with very different fee models.
- Hyperliquid vs Lighter: compare their order-book architecture, market coverage, and bot support.
- Aster vs Lighter: compare their supported markets, networks, collateral, and account connections.
Running bots on Lighter
Coinner runs five bot types on Lighter perpetuals, in the cloud and around the clock:
- Grid bots place buy and sell orders across a defined price range, up to 30 orders per market, Lighter's cap on Standard accounts.
- DCA bots open or reduce a position gradually.
- Copy bots mirror traders from the Lighter leaderboard, ranked by 30-day PnL and ROI. A Lighter trader can also be copied from an Arcus, dYdX, or Hyperliquid account, since they share the same market tickers.
- TradingView bots turn your alerts into orders.
- Market maker bots quote both sides of the book, earning the gap between them or leaning with the trend.
Every Lighter bot shares your account's request allowance, so Coinner paces them together and always keeps a reserve for cancels: even a busy bot can take its orders down. On a Standard account the market maker can move both quotes about once every two seconds; Premium removes the cancel delay and suits a busier market maker better.
New to perpetual futures? Start with what a perp DEX is. Ready to automate? See Lighter trading bots.