How Lighter Powers Robinhood Perps With USDG as the Quote Asset

**Vlad Novakovski** (0:00)
I think also on-chain technology is just at a point where it's just better, right?
If you trade on lighter, it's faster, it's cheaper, and it's decentralized and verifiable and more secure than centralized players. I think Telegram integration is a good example because their product is actually centralized, but they would still rather use DeFi rails underneath, meaning lighter than centralized rails.

**Laura Shin** (0:24)
Hi everyone, welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for All Things Crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. First, we'll take a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. This episode is brought to you by CAPE, America's privacy first mobile carrier. Same premium service you'd expect from any other carrier, but designed so your number, your location, and your data actually stay yours. Get 33 percent off six months at cape.co. slash Unchained. Fidelity has been investing in blockchain since 2014 They're not wondering if digital assets will shape the future. They're hiring the talent to help ensure they do. Explore opportunities today at crypto.fidelitycareers.com.
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Today's guest is Vlad Novakovski, founder and CEO of Lighter. Welcome, Vlad.

**Vlad Novakovski** (1:20)
Glad to be here. Thank you.

**Laura Shin** (1:23)
Just a heads up, everyone. Unfortunately, Vlad was not able to be in a quiet place. We will do our best to mute the external noise.
Robinhood Chain had a big announcement last week, and it's already showing promising metrics, and Lighter was a part of that announcement since your Perpdex is powering perpetual futures directly into Robinhood Wallet. This is a big deal since now Robinhood's retail traders, except for certain jurisdictions, including the US, will have easy access to decentralized Perps. Robinhood was an investor in your round last November. Was this part of the plan from that time? And just tell us generally how the deal came together.

**Vlad Novakovski** (2:06)
Yes, yes. Well, I joked with the team, this deal is 12 years in the making, or 25 years, if you look at it another way, because I went to high school with the Robinhood founder. We were the two lads at our school. And 12 years ago, I was an early advisor to Robinhood, which had just, I think their corporate name before that was actually CashCat, right? They had just become Robinhood and were getting their waitlist. So I've kind of known their team and been involved a bit at that point. But then, as you mentioned, late last year, they participated in our last equity round before we launched the token. And we've actually, I think, talked about doing something with them for a while. A lot of things had to come together for the tech to work, for Robinhood Chain to go live, for kind of purpose to become something that's interesting to customers in the Robinhood ecosystem. So yeah, I would say this partnership started a lot earlier than just that equity round.
And yeah, we're very excited about it. And it's also kind of the first step of what we hope will be a deepening level of partnership.

**Laura Shin** (3:24)
And what are the deal terms? Is there a revenue share?

**Vlad Novakovski** (3:29)
Yes. So the revenue is shared 50-50. And the 50% that goes to us is kind of immediately accrued to token holders, the buybacks, as is 100% of the revenue for Lighter.

**Laura Shin** (3:43)
Okay. And how does this product differ from Lighter's own app?

**Vlad Novakovski** (3:49)
Well, for one thing, as you mentioned, it has a unique front-end access through Robinhood Wallet, which, for many customers, they can bring, if they already have the wallet app, they can use it seamlessly, but also, if they have a Robinhood 4 app, they can fund the wallet with USDG, start trading perps, if they're in the area that has the jurisdiction for it. I mean, also, it will be like a different mix of markets, but it will be settled, or it is settled in USDG stablecoin.
I think we've already seen some of the markets folks are interested in to trade are more stocks, tokenized stocks, some memes as well. It will be a different customer base, different mix of markets. One thing that's interesting on the back end, there's high level of interoperability between Robinhood Chain and Lighter. A market maker can actually quickly move capital around between the two lighter domains as we're calling them, and that creates a lot of advantage as well, because the market maker can participate on both in a much more efficient way than if they were just trading on one exchange on Solana and another exchange on Ethereum.

**Laura Shin** (5:03)
Oh, interesting. I wasn't aware, but I guess since USDG is the quote asset on Lighter, I'm sorry, and the Robinhood app on Lighter, then doesn't that create a little bit of fragmentation anyway with your main app?