Perpetual Futures on zkLighter

zkLighter is the chain underlying Lighter, the Arbitrum-native perp DEX known for its zero-fee order book model. As Lighter's trading volume grew on Arbitrum, the team developed zkLighter as a dedicated ZK-proven settlement layer to reduce Arbitrum settlement costs and increase throughput for its order book architecture.

Lighter and the zero-fee model

Lighter charges zero fees for both makers and takers — a genuinely unusual structure in the perp DEX market. The protocol uses a fully on-chain order book with Spearbit's audit coverage. Twenty markets are listed with 50x maximum leverage. The trading cost structure is purely: bridge gas + any spread captured in the market.

For active traders, zero trading fees shift the focus to execution quality and spread. PerpFinder tracks Lighter's volume and we observe it attracting a specific segment of traders who are sensitive to taker fees but are comfortable with the depth tradeoffs of a smaller venue compared to Hyperliquid.

What zkLighter adds

A ZK-proven settlement layer means each batch of trades carries a validity proof confirming all matches were correct, similar to how Starknet handles Paradex settlements. The security improvement over optimistic rollup settlement is the absence of a challenge period: instead of waiting 7 days for fraud proof windows, positions settle finality once the ZK proof is verified on the base layer.

The zkLighter documentation describes the proof system and settlement architecture. Settlement anchors to Ethereum, inheriting Ethereum's base layer security for the validity proofs.

Market position

zkLighter is a narrow-focus chain. Unlike general-purpose L2s that host dozens of applications, zkLighter exists to run Lighter's order book. This concentration mirrors the Hyperliquid L1 approach: sacrifice composability with the broader DeFi ecosystem in exchange for throughput and cost optimization specific to order book matching.

The tradeoff is real: traders cannot use zkLighter liquidity positions as collateral in a lending protocol, or route through an AMM to swap into their desired collateral. Everything is either in Lighter's order book or bridged out.

DefiLlama's zkLighter page tracks the TVL anchored in the settlement layer.

See Lighter's current volume, fee structure, and market list at /perps/lighter. For a side-by-side fee comparison across zero-fee and low-fee venues, use the cost comparison tool.