The Lighter LLP is the pool behind Lighter’s own market making and liquidations: you deposit USDC, receive pool shares and share its profit and loss. On October 19, 2026 it held $94.8M and showed a 14.8% APR; over the last 12 months its share price rose 12.57%. To deposit you must stake LIT (10 USDC of allowance per LIT), which earns a fixed 6% in LIT but exposes you to a token that fell 34.9% in a month.
1. LLP APR, TVL and drawdowns in real numbers
The app shows one headline APR, but Lighter’s public API publishes the LLP’s daily share price since launch (641 daily points, January 16, 2025 to October 18, 2026). We measured returns and drawdowns from it on October 19, 2026:
| Measure | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| TVL (total asset value) | $94.8M | Public API, October 19, 2026 06:04 UTC ($78.5M on September 30) |
| APR shown in the app | 14.8% | API field annual_percentage_yield; Lighter does not document the window |
| Share-price return, last 30 days | +1.5% | September 18 → October 18, 2026 |
| Share-price return, last 90 days | +4.43% | July 20 → October 18, 2026 |
| Share-price return, last 180 days | +6.62% | April 21 → October 18, 2026 |
| Share-price return, last 12 months | +12.57% | October 18, 2025 → October 18, 2026 (starts just after the October 2025 sell-off) |
| Max drawdown, last 365 days | −0.49% | February 5 → March 9, 2026; worst single day −0.4% |
| October 10–11, 2025 sell-off | −5.35% | One-day fall; now just outside the 12-month window |
| Max drawdown since launch | −8.94% | March 2–5, 2025, when the pool was small |
| Losing days, last 365 | 93 of 365 | Returns are not smooth even when the year is positive |
| Sharpe ratio (app) | 3.82 | API field sharpe_ratio |
| Operator fee | 0% | Protocol-run; no profit share |
Share price went from 0.001000 at launch to 0.003634 on October 18, 2026 (+263.4%), but most of that came in the first months when the pool was small (+44.7% in February 2025, +33.8% in March 2025). Monthly returns in 2026: Jan +0.90%, Feb +0.76%, Mar −0.02%, Apr +0.95%, May +0.78%, Jun +0.95%, Jul +0.95%, Aug +1.85%, Sep +1.07%, Oct (to the 18th) +0.69%. October 2025 was −2.26%.
Three things to take from this. First, the 14.8% in the app is an annualised recent figure; the full last 12 months returned 12.57%, and that window has just rolled past the October 2025 sell-off, so it flatters the pool compared with the 8.07% the same measure gave on September 30. Second, “since inception” numbers you may see elsewhere are dominated by early 2025 and are not a guide to today. Third, most months in 2026 returned between 0.7% and 1.1%, roughly 9–14% a year if that pace held, and there is no promise that it will.
2. How the LLP earns and loses
The app describes the LLP as “a community-owned and protocol-run pool that provides liquidity to Lighter, runs market making strategies, and handles liquidations.” All its money sits in one account (index 281474976710654 in the API) that is the counterparty to all LLP trading and liquidations. The liquidation docs give it three roles:
- Liquidation fees. In a partial liquidation the engine sends IOC orders at the account’s “zero price”. If they fill better than that, it keeps up to 1% as a liquidation fee and sends it to the LLP.
- Position takeovers. If an account falls below its close-out margin, the LLP takes over its positions, in ascending order of unrealised PnL, as long as the LLP itself stays above its initial margin requirement. Whether that makes or loses money depends on how the market moves afterwards.
- ADL backstop. The strategy docs say auto-deleveraging events “are fully backstopped by LLP, meaning that liquidity providers absorb the associated risk.”
Standard accounts trade at 0% maker and taker, so there is no simple “fee share” to earn as on an AMM: the LLP makes its money from the spread and from liquidations. LLP Strategies split the pool’s collateral into 8 buckets. Each market belongs to one strategy, and a strategy’s maximum loss is its allocated collateral: if a bucket is wiped out, only that bucket goes to ADL.
| Strategy | Share | Collateral (October 19, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Default (Strategy #0) | 66.5% | $63.06M |
| Crypto (Strategy #2) | 15.0% | $14.26M |
| Spot (Strategy #1) | 10.9% | $10.30M |
| FX (Strategy #4) | 2.4% | $2.25M |
| Commodities (Strategy #3) | 2.2% | $2.04M |
| US Equities (Strategy #5) | 2.1% | $1.96M |
| High Risk (Strategy #7) | 0.8% | $0.75M |
| APAC Equities (Strategy #6) | 0.3% | $0.24M |
Collateral per bucket from the public API (pool_info.strategies), October 19, 2026; bucket names as the app’s Strategies tab labelled them in September 2026. The Default bucket grew from 57.0% to 66.5% of the pool since September 25. Because each bucket has its own loss limit, a blow-up in FX cannot drain the crypto bucket, but you own a slice of all of them.
For the liquidation waterfall itself (pre-liquidation, partial, full, ADL) see our Lighter and Hyperliquid insurance fund and ADL guide.
3. Deposits, withdrawals and the LIT allowance
- Allowance: you can hold up to 10 USDC in the LLP per staked LIT. 1,000 LIT staked = a $10,000 allowance. The Staking page shows it as “Current allowance: … USDC”.
- Deposit: Public Pools → Lighter Liquidity Provider (LLP) → Deposit. You receive pool shares at the current share price; your equity moves with the share price from then on.
- Withdrawal: the Public Pools docs: “Public Pools do not impose lockup periods, and funds can be withdrawn at any time.” The LLP charges no operator fee, so you receive your shares × the share price at withdrawal. The deposit window showed a 5-minute cooldown period when we checked it.
- Unstaking LIT: a 3-day lockup, and it shrinks your allowance. Lighter does not document what happens to an LLP position larger than a reduced allowance, so withdraw from the LLP first, then unstake.
- Tax records: keep your own log of deposits, share values and withdrawals; the pool page shows “Your Deposits” and “Your Equity”.
4. Risks you are taking
- You are the counterparty. The LLP takes the other side of traders and of liquidations. A fast, one-directional market can leave it holding losing positions: −5.35% in one day in October 2025 and −8.94% at its deepest since launch.
- ADL exposure. Auto-deleveraging is fully backstopped by the LLP. Strategy buckets cap how far a loss can spread, but not the loss inside a bucket.
- LIT price risk. Your access depends on holding LIT, and LIT fell 34.9% in the 30 days to October 19, 2026 (to $3.17). If LIT falls more than the pool and staking earn, you lose money overall.
- Liquidity of exit. Pools have no lockup, but unstaking LIT takes 3 days, and selling a large amount of LIT moves its price.
- No compensation. The deposit window states that participation may result in partial or total loss and that “Lighter offers no compensation for losses.”
- Platform risk. Smart contracts, the prover and the sequencer can fail. Lighter publishes audits and an Ethereum-based escape route, which reduces but does not remove that risk.
- Where you live. Lighter’s Terms exclude persons in the US, Canada, the UK, China, North Korea, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and Syria, among others.
Ready to stake or deposit?
Create your Lighter account with code 718610TD, deposit USDC, then follow the steps below. Standard accounts trade at 0% maker and taker.
5. LIT staking: 6% APR, lockup and what it unlocks
LIT (Lighter Infrastructure Token) is staked on the Staking page of the app (app.lighter.xyz/staking). On October 19, 2026 the staking pool held 113.75M LIT (about $360.6M at $3.17), according to the public API; the pool was created on January 14, 2026.
- Reward: the docs describe a “fixed 6% APR through staking rewards”, paid in LIT that the protocol buys from a designated address. It is fixed in LIT terms, not in dollars.
- Lockup: unstaking is subject to a 3-day lockup. The Staking page has a “Pending Unstakes” list where requests wait.
- Buybacks: separately, Lighter buys back LIT with trading-fee revenue using daily 24-hour TWAP orders. That supports demand for the token but is not paid to you.
- LIT Fee Credits: traders can buy credits instead of staking to reach a Premium tier. All proceeds go to LIT stakers, streamed as daily rewards over the credit period.
| Benefit | Threshold | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| LLP access | 1+ LIT staked | Deposit allowance of 10 USDC per staked LIT |
| Fee schedule discounts | 1,000+ effective LIT | Lower maker and taker fees on Premium accounts |
| CloudFront bypass | 500,000+ effective LIT | A direct route to the exchange for lower request latency |
| LIT Fee Credits | Purchase | Rent a fee and latency tier without staking the full amount |
The fee discount matters only if you trade on a Premium account; Standard accounts pay nothing already. The tiers are counted across your main account and all its sub-accounts:
| Staked LIT | Discount | Premium maker | Premium taker |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | — | 0.0040% | 0.0280% |
| 1,000 | 2.5% | 0.0039% | 0.0273% |
| 3,000 | 5% | 0.0038% | 0.0266% |
| 10,000 | 10% | 0.0036% | 0.0252% |
| 30,000 | 15% | 0.0034% | 0.0238% |
| 100,000 | 20% | 0.0032% | 0.0224% |
| 300,000 | 25% | 0.0030% | 0.0210% |
| 500,000 | 30% | 0.0028% | 0.0196% |
Taker latency is 140 ms on every Premium tier; Standard is 0% / 0% with 300 ms taker latency. More in Lighter’s zero-fee model.
6. Community Public Pools (Lighter vaults)
Public Pools are Lighter’s vaults: an operator trades pooled capital from a sub-account, depositors receive pool shares and can withdraw at any time. Each pool is defined by:
- Operator fee: the percentage of profits paid to the operator when a participant withdraws.
- Minimum operator share: how much of the pool the operator must own. In the docs’ example, a 10% minimum and a 10,000 USDC operator deposit allow participants to deposit up to 90,000 USDC. The deposit window shows “Capacity Used” for this reason.
- Cross margin only: Public Pools do not support isolated positions.
Who can run one: the user docs say operators are currently whitelisted; the API docs say creation needs $10M or more of paid volume and allow up to 6 pools per wallet address.
What the list looks like (API, October 19, 2026): 334 community pools holding about $4.3M in total, against $94.8M in the LLP alone. Only 7 held more than $100,000 and only one more than $1M. Operator fees on the ten largest ranged from 10% to 30%, and displayed APRs on the pools above $100,000 ranged from −271% to +85%. Such spreads come from short histories, small balances and leverage, not from skill you can rely on. A Public Pool is copy trading with the operator’s money in it too: check the Return Percentage, NAV and PnL charts, the positions tab and how long the pool has existed.
7. Worked example: putting $10,000 into the LLP
| Item | Calculation | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| LIT needed for a $10,000 allowance | 10,000 ÷ 10 | 1,000 LIT |
| Cost of that LIT | 1,000 × $3.17 | ≈ $3,170 |
| Total capital committed | $10,000 + $3,170 | ≈ $13,170 |
| Staking reward in a year | 1,000 × 6% | 60 LIT (≈ $190 at today’s price) |
| LLP result if the next year matches the last | $10,000 × 12.57% | ≈ $1,257 |
| Combined, before LIT price changes | $190 + $1,257 | ≈ $1,447 (≈ 11.0% on $13,170) |
| Effect of LIT repeating its last 30 days (down 34.9%) | $3,170 × 34.9% | ≈ −$1,108 |
LIT price from CoinGecko and Lighter’s LIT/USDC market on October 19, 2026. Past LLP returns are shown for scale only.
The lesson: the LLP route is really two positions, a USDC market-making position and a LIT position about a third its size. One month like the last one in LIT wipes out most of a year’s yield. Staking 1,000 LIT also gets you the first Premium discount (2.5%), which is only worth something if you trade on Premium.
A Public Pool example: you deposit $1,000 into a pool with a 20% operator fee. If the pool gains 20% and you withdraw, your share is worth $1,200; the operator takes 20% of the $200 profit ($40) and you receive about $1,160. If the pool loses 20%, you receive $800 and the operator takes nothing.
8. Step by step: stake LIT and deposit into the LLP
- Create and fund an account. Connect a wallet at app.lighter.xyz and deposit USDC. Deposits go through universal deposit addresses on many chains and are converted to USDC. Details in the Lighter deposit and withdrawal guide.
- Buy LIT. Open the LIT/USDC spot market and buy the amount you need: 1 LIT per 10 USDC you want in the LLP. Spot trading on a Standard account is 0% maker and taker.
- Stake it. Go to Staking in the top menu, choose the Stake tab, enter the amount and sign. Your LLP allowance appears on the same page.
- Deposit into the LLP. Open Public Pools, click “Lighter Liquidity Provider (LLP)” under Protocol Public Pools, then Deposit. Enter the USDC amount (up to your allowance), read the risk notice and confirm.
- Or pick a community pool. Under User Public Pools, open a pool, read its operator fee, minimum operator share, capacity used, history and positions, then deposit.
- To exit, click Withdraw on the pool page, then unstake LIT on the Staking page if you want it back (3 days).
Developers can do the same through the official Python SDK, which has mint_shares / burn_shares for pools and stake_assets / unstake_assets for staking (see the Lighter API guide). New to the exchange itself? The Lighter review covers safety, fees and who can use it.
9. LLP vs Hyperliquid HLP
| Lighter LLP | Hyperliquid HLP | |
|---|---|---|
| What it does | Market making, liquidation takeovers, ADL backstop | Market making, liquidations, receives a share of fees |
| Access | LIT stakers only: 10 USDC per staked LIT | Anyone, no token needed |
| Lockup | None (5-minute cooldown shown); 3 days to unstake LIT | 4 days after your latest deposit |
| Size | $94.8M (October 19, 2026) | $179.1M (October 20, 2026) |
| APR shown | 14.8% (October 19, 2026) | 3.5% (October 20, 2026) |
| Operator fee | 0% | 0% |
The LLP showed the higher headline rate in the table above. The LLP asks you to hold a volatile token for access; HLP is larger, simpler and token-free, but locks deposits for 4 days. Neither is a savings account. Details: Hyperliquid vaults and HLP, DEX passive income compared, Hyperliquid vs Lighter and Aster staking and asUSDF.
10. FAQ
What is the Lighter LLP?
The Lighter Liquidity Provider (LLP) is a protocol-run public pool that provides liquidity on Lighter, runs market-making strategies and handles liquidations. Depositors own pool shares, so they share its profit and loss. On October 19, 2026 the API showed a TVL of $94.8M, a 0% operator fee and an APR of 14.8%; the share price rose 12.57% over the previous 12 months.
What is the Lighter LLP APR right now?
14.8% on October 19, 2026, the annualised figure the app shows (Lighter does not say over which window). The share price actually returned +1.5% over 30 days, +4.43% over 90 days and +12.57% over 12 months. Monthly results in 2026: Jan +0.90%, Feb +0.76%, Mar −0.02%, Apr +0.95%, May +0.78%, Jun +0.95%, Jul +0.95%, Aug +1.85%, Sep +1.07%, Oct (to the 18th) +0.69%. It is not a fixed rate and can be negative.
Do I need LIT to deposit into the LLP?
Yes. Lighter’s docs say the LLP is exclusively accessible to LIT stakers: every 1 LIT you stake lets you deposit up to 10 USDC into the LLP. To put $10,000 into the LLP you need 1,000 LIT staked, which cost about $3,170 at the October 19, 2026 price of $3.17.
What does LIT staking pay?
Lighter’s docs say stakers currently earn a fixed 6% APR, paid in LIT the protocol buys for rewards. Proceeds from LIT Fee Credits are also streamed to stakers. Unstaking has a 3-day lockup. The APR is paid in LIT, so your return in dollars depends on the LIT price, which fell 34.9% in the 30 days to October 19, 2026.
Can I withdraw from the Lighter LLP at any time?
Yes. Public Pools, the LLP included, have no lockup: the docs say you can withdraw at any time (the deposit window showed a 5-minute cooldown period when we checked it). LIT staking is different: unstaking takes 3 days, and unstaking lowers your LLP allowance, so withdraw from the LLP first.
Has the Lighter LLP ever lost money?
Yes. Its deepest drawdown since launch was 8.94% (March 2–5, 2025), it fell 5.35% in one day during the October 10–11, 2025 sell-off, and in the 365 days to October 18, 2026 its worst drawdown was 0.49% with 93 losing days. The app warns that participation may result in partial or total loss and that Lighter offers no compensation.
Does Lighter have vaults?
Lighter calls its vaults Public Pools. The LLP is the protocol’s own pool; 334 user-run pools held about $4.3M in total on October 19, 2026, with operator fees of 10% to 30% on the ten largest. Operators are currently whitelisted, depositors receive pool shares and the operator takes a share of profits when you withdraw.
How does staking LIT lower trading fees?
Only on Premium accounts; Standard accounts already pay 0% maker and taker. On Premium, staking 1,000 LIT cuts fees by 2.5% and 500,000 LIT by 30%. The stake is counted across your main account and its sub-accounts.
How does the LLP compare with Hyperliquid’s HLP?
Both are protocol vaults that market-make and take over liquidations. HLP needs no token stake and has a 4 days deposit lockup; it held about $179.1M at an APR of 3.5% as of October 20, 2026. The LLP held $94.8M at 14.8% on October 19, 2026, needs LIT staked for access and has no lockup.
Earn on Lighter
Stake LIT, join the LLP or a community pool, and trade perps at 0% on Standard. Referral code 718610TD: first week of Premium fees rebated.
Prefer a token-free vault? Hyperliquid with code HOLYGRAIL gives 4% off trading fees on your first $25M of volume (Hyperliquid referral code HOLYGRAIL). Compare every venue in our best DEX guide.
Disclosure: 718610TD and HOLYGRAIL are our referral codes; we earn a share of fees paid by referred accounts (on Lighter, Premium fees and Standard advanced-order fees). Not financial or tax advice. Returns were calculated from Lighter’s public API on October 19, 2026; past returns do not predict future ones, and the staking APR and program terms can change.