Lighter perpetuals: funding, fees and live markets
Zero-fee perp DEX for standard accounts, hourly funding, and the widest non-crypto list (stocks, FX, indices, commodities) of the three. 85% of its markets have positive funding at this snapshot.
Share of combined Hyperliquid + Lighter open interest ($11.89B); Aster reports OI per market only. OI-weighted rate = this venue's DEX Funding Index component.
How Lighter computes funding
- Interval
- Every hour; the 1-hour premium is divided by 8 so the premium is spread over 8 hours
- Interest component
- Per-market fixed interest rate component (the BTC market publishes 0.0032 as base interest rate in its market config)
- Premium and clamp
- Small clamp and big clamp per market (BTC: 0.05 and 4.0, multiplied by a funding premium multiplier of 50 in the market config); premium sampled once per minute at a random time
- Formula
fundingRate = clamp(premium + clamp(interest − premium, −smallClamp, +smallClamp), −bigClamp, +bigClamp) / 8, paid every hour
Funding is peer-to-peer on all three venues: the exchange does not take a cut of funding payments. Source: Lighter docs: Funding.
Trading fees
- Maker
- 0%
- Taker
- 0%
- Schedule
- Standard accounts trade all markets with zero maker and taker fees, with 300 ms taker latency. Premium/Advanced accounts pay 0.004% maker / 0.028% taker (discounted up to 30% by staking LIT) for lower latency; Plus accounts pay 0.5 bps for higher rate limits.
- Accounts
- Three account types: Standard (free), Plus (0.5 bps, more rate limit), Premium/Advanced (fee-paying, 140 ms taker latency).
- Chain
- Lighter zk-rollup (Ethereum L2) with verifiable matching
Referral and builder programs
- Referrals
- Referral kickbacks apply only to fees paid by referred users on paid account types: 10% (Bronze) or 20% (Silver, 15+ active referrals). Referee gets a 10% fee rebate. Paid weekly on Mondays, $1 minimum.
- Builders
- Partner Attribution: integrators may charge up to 10 bps on perps and 100 bps on spot through their own frontend; non-zero fees require the client to be on a Plus or Premium account.
Largest Lighter markets right now
Ranked by open interest on Lighter.
| Market | Funding 8h | APR | Open interest | 24h volume |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BTC BTC | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $162.9M | $972.0M |
| ETH ETH | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $75.3M | $452.2M |
| LIT LIT | 0.0000% | 0.0% | $34.2M | $17.5M |
| NEAR NEAR | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $20.7M | $19.2M |
| ZEC ZEC | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $18.0M | $39.3M |
| XAU XAU | 0.0032% | 3.5% | $16.5M | $24.6M |
| SOL SOL | 0.0008% | 0.9% | $15.7M | $48.1M |
| HYPE HYPE | 0.0048% | 5.3% | $14.7M | $33.8M |
| ZRO ZRO | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $8.7M | $1.5M |
| QQQ QQQ | 0.0488% | 53.4% | $6.5M | $22.1M |
| WLD WLD | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $5.9M | $3.6M |
| XPL XPL | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $5.9M | $2.1M |
| WTI WTI | -0.0592% | -64.8% | $5.5M | $12.4M |
| SPY SPY | 0.0480% | 52.6% | $4.9M | $9.6M |
| AAVE AAVE | 0.0096% | 10.5% | $4.5M | $896K |
Markets only Lighter lists
Perps that trade on Lighter alone, largest 12 by open interest.
Compare
Sources
- Lighter docs: Funding
- Lighter docs: Trading Fees
- Lighter docs: Referral Program
- Lighter docs: Partner Attribution
- Live data: Lighter public API, snapshot Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:39:13 UTC (endpoints)
Official app: https://app.lighter.xyz. Documentation: https://docs.lighter.xyz. Facts above are quoted from the documentation on the date shown and can change without notice; the venue's own docs prevail.