Lighter, Perp DEXs and Custom ZK Circuits

Zero Knowledge

In this episode, Anna Rose and Tarun Chitra chat with Vlad and Murat from Lighter, a ZK-powered perp DEX on Ethereum. They explore how perps, short for perpetuals/perpetual trades, emerged as a crypto invention, how the exchanges offering perps evolved over the years, and the tradeoff space between transparency and privacy, specifically for marketmakers. Vladimir discusses the advantage of building a perp DEX with a team consisting of both quants and engineers. They also cover how ZK has come to be used in some projects but not others, what opportunities verifiability can unlock, and why their project favored building custom ZK circuits over using existing zkVMs. Related links:

• ZK Whiteboard Sessions
• zkLighter White Paper
• A primer on perpetuals
• Hyperliquid docs
• dYdX
• GMX
• Lighter Discord

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