Key Highlights
- Lighter has upgraded its liquidity provision to segmented “LLP Strategies,” isolating risks across crypto, FX, and RWA asset classes for better management of liquidations and losses.
- With a TVL of $932.87 million, 24-hour perpetual volume of $2.34 billion, and open interest of $722.64 million, Lighter holds an 8-9% market share, positioning it as a strong contender against leader Hyperliquid.
- In the competitive perp DEX landscape, Hyperliquid dominates with 23-25% share and $5.132 billion OI, while the sector saw over $1 trillion in monthly volumes in 2025, driven by non-custodial trading demand.
Lighter, one of the popular decentralized perpetuals trading platforms, has rolled out a significant upgrade to its liquidity provision system, moving away from a single shared collateral pool toward segmented “LLP Strategies.” The latest move aims to isolate risk across different market categories.
Announced today via the project’s official X account, the change divides the Lighter Liquidity Provider (LLP) vault into distinct buckets tailored to specific asset classes. It currently involves separation for crypto-native perpetuals, foreign exchange derivatives, and real-world assets (RWAs) such as tokenized gold, silver, or other commodities.
With this development, each bucket will function like a segregated shard for risk purposes. It will also help the project to manage liquidations, automatic deleveraging (ADL) events, and potential losses more efficiently while staying contained within their assigned strategy rather than spilling over to affect the entire pool.
The upgrade arrives amid a busy product roadmap Lighter. In 2026, so far, the platform has been layering in features such as unified collateral across spot and perps, mandatory LIT staking for LLP access, and plans to tokenize LLP positions themselves.
As of DeFiLlama data, Lighter currently has a total value locked (TVL) of $932.87 million. It has generated over $2.34 billion in perpetual volume in the past 24 hours, with the open interest (OI) on the platform sitting at $722.64 million.
Lighter Vs Hyperliquid: The race for userbase
Lighter, trailing behind Hyperliquid in raw dominance at roughly 8-9% share, is quietly building a compelling counter-narrative centered on its latest LLP upgrade. With the addition of this latest development, the protocol is now capping downside and preventing one segment’s pain from bleeding into others.
With zero retail fees, verifiable ZK matching for privacy, and stronger institutional backing, the update positions Lighter to close the gap on Hyperliquid by offering safer, more targeted liquidity in a diversifying derivatives space.
However, Hyperliquid remains the undisputed heavyweight in the perp DEX arena as of mid-February 2026, consistently claiming the largest slice of market share. Its revenue has been long-surpassing that of Lighter and any other perp trading platforms in the current market.
The current perp DEX landscape
The current perp DEX landscape in early 2026 remains fiercely competitive, with decentralized perpetual futures platforms capturing an increasingly meaningful slice of overall derivatives trading.
Hyperliquid continues to lead all other platforms by a wide margin in most metrics. It is commanding roughly 23-25% of recent weekly market share and frequently topping open interest and volume leaderboards despite some erosion from its earlier peaks. It currently has an OI of $5.132 billion, which is highest among all decentralized perpetuals trading platforms.
Hyperliquid’s close challengers include Aster, which has surged on user inflows and incentive programs, alongside edgeX, both hovering in the 12% range for dominance in seven-day snapshots. As of now, Lighter sits at third position.
The perp DEX sector as a whole had seen explosive maturation throughout 2025 monthly volumes routinely exceed $1 trillion across platforms. The decentralized perps now account for a noticeable portion of global futures activity, up sharply from prior years as traders seek non-custodial alternatives with tighter spreads and lower latency.
Also read: Nexo Returns to U.S. With Compliant Crypto Trading and Credit Services