Question 1

What is Lighter (LIT)?

Accepted Answer

Lighter is a Layer 2 rollup protocol designed for high-performance decentralised finance (DeFi), offering a verifiable and low-latency trading experience using application-specific zero-knowledge proofs. Its architecture addresses key limitations of general-purpose rollups, including front-running and maximal extractable value (MEV), by implementing fair sequencing, time-priority matching, and zk-SNARK-backed validation. Lighter is built to handle complex order book-based markets, including perpetuals and spot markets, while maintaining trust-minimised guarantees via Ethereum.

Lighter's architecture includes distinct modules for sequencing, proving, data aggregation and exit safety. It enables trustless recovery of funds through its Escape Hatch mechanism, while leveraging data blobs and layered aggregation circuits to compress and verify trading activity efficiently. Designed with extensibility in mind, Lighter also supports programmable multi-step instructions, data compression, and modular applications such as lending and prediction markets.

Question 2

What is Lighter (LIT) used for?

Accepted Answer

LIT is the native token of the Lighter protocol. While the protocol focuses heavily on technical and architectural design, the token's utility is expected to support the following roles:

- **Fee settlement** within the protocol for trades and interactions
- **Incentivisation** of protocol participants such as sequencers and provers
- **Governance** over protocol upgrades and parameters
- **Collateral or staking** in future decentralised roles, such as shared proving or liquidity provisioning

LIT aligns the economic layer with protocol performance, serving as the settlement and coordination asset across trading, verification and network participation.

Question 3

How does Lighter work?

Accepted Answer

Lighter introduces a set of interconnected systems optimised for verifiable on-chain trading:

- **Sequencer**: A low-latency engine that bundles and commits transactions in strict price-time order, while supporting complex order types and market integrations.
- **Prover**: Generates zero-knowledge proofs for batches of blocks, verifying correctness of matching, state transitions and account updates. Multi-layered aggregation is used to compress proofs efficiently.
- **Smart Contracts**: Manage user assets, state root commitments, proof verification and censorship-resistant exits.
- **Witness Generator**: Transforms committed transaction data into public inputs for zk-circuits.
- **Escape Hatch**: A cryptographic mechanism allowing users to recover assets using only data posted on Ethereum in the event of protocol failure or censorship.

All batches and state changes are published to Ethereum using data blobs. Verification circuits validate every step, from block creation to trade execution.

Question 4

Core Technical Components

Accepted Answer

- **State Tree**: A Merkle-like structure storing account balances, order books, withdrawal intents, public pool data and insurance funds.
- **Account Tree**: Nested under the state tree, stores metadata for user sub-accounts, keys, positions and order information.
- **Order Book Tree**: Implements an optimised prefix tree to manage order matching with logarithmic complexity.
- **Block Circuits**: Generate zk-SNARK proofs for exchange logic across execution cycles, including pre- and post-execution states.
- **Layered Aggregation Circuits**: Compress multiple block proofs into a single verifiable output, improving performance and reducing on-chain costs.

Question 5

Instruction Stack and Modularity

Accepted Answer

Lighter supports a programmable instruction stack allowing for multi-step actions, such as:

- Grouped order submission
- Conditional trades
- Linked position adjustments

This design enables composable financial logic, paving the way for lending, collateral flows and structured products to be added modularly.

Question 6

Escape Hatch Mechanism

Accepted Answer

The Escape Hatch protects user funds by enabling them to exit via on-chain proofs even if the sequencer is unavailable or malicious. It verifies user states using blob data and publicly posted commitments, ensuring asset recovery without dependency on off-chain actors.

#	Instrument	Exchange	Benchmark Score	Price	24h Change	24h Volume	24h Trades	24h Open	24h High
1	LIT-USDT LIT-USDT	okex	A	3,68USDT	9,15%	7.320.429,28LIT	174.743	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
2	LIT-USDT LITUSDT	bybit	A	3,68USDT	9,19%	5.615.321,38LIT	137.038	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
3	LIT-USDT LIT_USDT	gateio	A	3,68USDT	9,16%	3.247.191,39LIT	73.417	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
4	LIT-USD LIGHTER-USD	coinbase	AA	3,68USD	9,25%	2.221.650,49LIT	18.921	3,37USD	3,99USD
5	LIT-USDC LIT-USDC	okex	A	3,68USDC	9,11%	552.087,75LIT	77.021	3,37USDC	3,98USDC
6	LIT-USD LIGHTERUSD	kraken	AA	3,68USD	9,23%	439.933,88LIT	6.756	3,37USD	4,00USD
7	LIT-USD litusd	bitstamp	AA	3,68USD	9,18%	313.916,32LIT	2.269	3,37USD	4,01USD
8	LIT-USDT LIT_USDT	whitebit	BB	3,68USDT	9,18%	306.667,30LIT	9.104	3,37USDT	3,98USDT
9	LIT-EUR LIT-EUR	okex	A	3,29EUR	9,90%	45.207,24LIT	2.872	2,99EUR	3,54EUR
10	LIT-TRY LIT-TRY	okex	A	184,01TRY	10,22%	27.326,98LIT	734	166,95TRY	196,60TRY
11	LIT-USDT LITUSDT	cexio	BB	3,70USDT	9,04%	2.677,86LIT	32	3,40USDT	3,95USDT
12	LIT-USD LIGHTER_USD	cryptodotcom	AA	3,66USD	14,93%	1.741,70LIT	62	3,19USD	3,95USD
13	LIT-EUR liteur	bitstamp	AA	3,52EUR	29,58%	69,05LIT	4	2,72EUR	3,52EUR
14	LIT-USDC LITUSDC	cexio	BB	3,65USDC	8,20%	6,50LIT	1	3,38USDC	3,65USDC
15	LIT-USD LITUSD	cexio	BB	3,86USD	13,42%	6,00LIT	1	3,40USD	3,86USD
16	LIT-USDT lit_usdt	digifinex	D	3,69USDT	9,28%	6.069.765,66LIT	48.501	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
17	LIT-THB THB_LIT	bitkub	C	123,10THB	8,02%	4.696.301,27LIT	121.277	113,96THB	134,81THB
18	LIT-KRW KRW-LIT	upbit	B	4.940,00KRW	10,29%	792.043,63LIT	7.721	4.479,00KRW	5.290,00KRW
19	LIT-USDT LIT_USDT	coinw	-	3,71USDT	9,99%	782.197,63LIT	10.332	3,37USDT	3,98USDT
20	LIT-USDT litusdt	huobipro	C	3,68USDT	9,06%	426.374,42LIT	26.451	3,37USDT	3,97USDT
21	LIT-USDT lit_usdt	xtpub	-	3,69USDT	9,31%	388.102,88LIT	5.006	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
22	LIT-USDT LIT2USDT	toobit	C	3,68USDT	9,19%	368.606,08LIT	32.793	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
23	LIT-TRY LITTRY	btcturk	E	182,46TRY	9,50%	315.345,53LIT	2.655	166,63TRY	200,00TRY
24	LIT-KRW LIT_KRW	bithumbkorea	-	4.893,00KRW	10,03%	290.705,10LIT	4.190	4.447,00KRW	5.330,00KRW
25	LIT-USDT LIGHTER_USDT	bitunix	C	3,68USDT	9,19%	204.444,85LIT	30.290	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
26	LIT-USDT sLITUSDT	phemex	C	3,71USDT	10,17%	135.984,50LIT	8.718	3,36USDT	4,00USDT
27	LIT-USD LITUSD	edxmarkets	C	3,70USD	10,11%	113.253,26LIT	150	3,36USD	3,99USD
28	LIT-EUR LIGHTER-EUR	bitvavo	B	3,29EUR	9,47%	97.093,96LIT	1.156	3,01EUR	3,54EUR
29	LIT-USDT LITUSDT	btcturk	E	3,66USDT	8,77%	74.538,60LIT	965	3,37USDT	3,98USDT
30	LIT-USDT LIGHTER-USDT	bingx	D	3,69USDT	9,40%	44.155,44LIT	6.269	3,37USDT	3,99USDT
31	LIT-USD LIT-USD	btse	-	3,69USD	9,28%	15.284,36LIT	38.311	3,37USD	3,98USD
32	LIT-USDC LITUSDC	mexc	C	3,71USDC	10,29%	14.496,39LIT	3.100	3,37USDC	3,97USDC
33	LIT-USDT LIT-USDT	btse	-	3,69USDT	9,31%	13.345,81LIT	18.867	3,37USDT	3,96USDT
34	LIT-IDR lighteridr	indodax	E	66.463,00IDR	8,45%	3.914,04LIT	199	61.284,00IDR	71.650,00IDR
35	LIT-USDC LIT-USDC	btse	-	3,70USDC	9,86%	1.223,75LIT	3.967	3,37USDC	3,96USDC
36	LIT-KRW lit_krw	korbit	C	4.855,00KRW	7,27%	538,48LIT	20	4.526,00KRW	5.495,00KRW
37	LIT-BRL LIT-BRL	mercadobtc	C	19,50BRL	20,28%	247,04LIT	21	16,21BRL	19,50BRL
38	LIT-USDT USDT-LIT	upbit	B	3,48USDT	30,56%	220,32LIT	4	2,66USDT	3,48USDT
39	LIT-BTC BTC-LIT	upbit	B	0.0₄4530BTC	16,15%	10,98LIT	6	0.0₄3900BTC	0.0₄4600BTC