Empire Inside Lighter’s Plan to Overtake Hyperliquid | Vladimir Novakovski
Jan 20, 2026
In this engaging discussion, Vladimir Novakovski, Founder and CEO of Lighter, shares insights from his journey transitioning from traditional finance to crypto. He explains Lighter’s edge over Hyperliquid, emphasizing the advantages of being an Ethereum L2. Vladimir also dives into the significance of ZK technology, their partnership with Robinhood, and the potential for equity perps in the market. With an exciting vision of merging TradFi and DeFi, this conversation is packed with fascinating perspectives on the future of finance.
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Journey From TradFi To Crypto Founder
- Vladimir Novakovski left TradFi and joined startups after seeing inefficiencies in finance exposed by events like 2008 and FTX.
- His crypto interest began with Bitcoin in 2012, Ethereum in 2015, and ZK proofs around 2018, guiding Lighter's mission.
Ship Apps Before Infrastructure
- Start with the application that customers actually want to use and iterate with real users from day one.
- Building infrastructure first without an active product risks slow adoption and weak bootstrapping.
Performance Determines DEX Adoption
- Traders prefer venues with competitive performance, so DEXs must match CEX speed and UX to win market share.
- Lighter aims to be faster and more competitive than Hyperliquid to capture traders moving between centralized and decentralized venues.