From $0 to $1B+ in TVL in 9 Months: How Lighter Scaled a ZK-Powered Perpetuals Exchange with Dynamic

Trading onchain is often slow, clunky, and intimidating, but Lighter is proving it doesn’t have to be. Powered by ZK technology, Lighter delivers lightning-fast throughput and near-infinite scalability. Their goal is ambitious: compete with centralized exchanges like Binance by offering a user experience so simple that, as Head of Product Furkan Doğan put it, “my father should be able to trade on a DEX without any pain.”

Nine months after launching, Lighter has already grown to over $1B in total value locked (TVL), with tens of thousands of traders active on the platform. This explosive growth has been powered by Dynamic’s secure wallet infrastructure, which provides single-click connections to hundreds of external wallets and embedded wallets for new users. Everything remains fully non-custodial under the hood.

“We’re extremely happy using Dynamic. It’s easy to integrate, supports lots of wallets out of the box, and the team is extremely responsive. For our users, the experience from their first wallet connection to first trade is smooth.”
— Furkan Doğan, Head of Product at Lighter

The Challenge: Turning Wallets from a Barrier into a Gateway

For apps like decentralized exchanges, wallet infrastructure is the front door to the product. Lighter knew that if wallet setup was confusing or unreliable, users would simply leave. They needed an approach that would allow them to move quickly while still creating an onboarding experience that felt seamless for everyday crypto users and newcomers.

Building this infrastructure in-house would have slowed down development and diverted resources from core exchange mechanics, so Lighter began evaluating partners. For experienced crypto users, they needed a solution that could support an extensive list of external wallets out of the box, so everyone could experience Lighter with their favorite wallet. For users new to crypto, Lighter wanted to make it simple to start trading without seed phrases and offer an experience that feels like a traditional account.

Beyond usability, Lighter also needed a solution that could keep up with their pace. The product team ships fast, with frequent version bumps and rapid feature rollouts. Any wallet provider they chose had to handle these updates without breaking user sessions or creating new sources of friction. And with ambitions to scale beyond perps, Lighter needed wallet infrastructure that wouldn’t just solve today’s problems but would grow with them as they expanded.

Why Lighter Chose Dynamic

After comparing several wallet infrastructure providers, Lighter decided to move forward with Dynamic. The key deciding factors were a combination of technical depth, developer experience, and trusted relationships between the teams.

Lighter highlighted several reasons Dynamic stood out as the clear choice:

• Fast and straightforward integration. Rather than spending months building wallet infrastructure from scratch, the Lighter team was able to plug Dynamic in quickly and concentrate on refining their core trading experience.
• Extensive external wallet coverage. This ensured that users could connect using their preferred wallet without the team writing custom integrations, minimizing drop-off and removing friction from the first step of the user journey.
• Embedded wallets that feel like traditional accounts. New users can start trading in seconds without managing seed phrases, while advanced users still have the option to connect their existing wallets.
• True partnership and rapid responsiveness. Early on, Lighter identified an issue where package updates disconnected user sessions. Dynamic shipped a fix within weeks and has maintained fast and open communication ever since.

“Having the Dynamic team in a shared channel made a big difference. We raised issues and got fast, thoughtful responses and fixes. The last three or four months have been extremely stable.”

The Results: Rapid Growth, Unlocked Scale, and Zero Drop-Off

With Dynamic handling wallet onboarding and identity flows, Lighter has been able to scale at an incredible pace. Since starting their private beta nine months ago, the team has already grown past $1B TVL while onboarding tens of thousands of traders during a closed beta. Many of whom use embedded wallets to skip traditional crypto setup entirely.

Lighter measures success through the numbers that matter most: TVL, open interest, and active traders. Each of these has been climbing steadily since launch, proof that the wallet experience is working, traders are sticking around, and the platform is capturing meaningful liquidity. At the time of writing, Lighter’s platform has surpassed $1B in TVL and maintains over $2B in open interest.

The Road Ahead for Dynamic and Lighter

The next major milestone for Lighter is the launch of spot trading, which will expand the surface area of the platform and give users more ways to trade. Longer-term, the company aims to become not just an exchange but a developer platform that other applications can build on, leveraging Ethereum’s composability to integrate with the wider DeFi ecosystem.

As Lighter continues to grow, Dynamic will remain a critical partner, powering the wallet layer across web and mobile, adding new capabilities like swaps and transfers, and helping Lighter deliver a DEX experience that feels as seamless as the best consumer apps.

Building a high-performance DEX or perps platform? Let Dynamic take wallet infrastructure off your roadmap so your team can focus on the product only you can build.