⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.

Comparison · By Stephan Kulik · Updated 2026-09-22

Lighter vs GRVT (2026): Zero Fees vs Hybrid TradFi Shelf

These two sit at opposite ends of the decentralisation question. Lighter is a zk-rollup on Ethereum: settlement inherits Ethereum's security, Standard accounts pay nothing on either side, and its docs describe wallet-based onboarding with no identity step. GRVT calls itself a hybrid: an off-chain order book that its User Agreement says is owned by a Panama company, settlement on its own ZKsync-stack validium where order data stays private, self-custody through a signing key, and identity verification before an account is registered. Lighter's LIT and GRVT's token are both live.

At a glance

✓ facts verified 2026-09-21 · each venue's official docs Every cell restates a claim on one of this site's pages: /compare/hyperliquid-vs-lighter/ , /lighter/fees/ , /grvt/ , /grvt/how-to-start/ , /grvt/fees/ , /airdrops/ .

Fees

Lighter — Order-book; zero-fee Standard accounts, paid Premium tier for lower latency, Plus tier for higher rate limits. Base tier: 0% (Standard) / 0.0280% (Premium) taker, 0% (Standard) / 0.0040% (Premium) maker. Numerics reflect Standard accounts (zero-fee); Premium trades 0.0040%/0.0280% with a LIT-staking discount grid. Discounts: LIT staking reduces Premium rates on a published grid. Standard’s trade-off is latency (300ms taker) and API rate limits, not hidden fees or position caps; LIT is live (staking discounts the Premium grid) and the points program remains a separate, conversion-undocumented track. Schedule verified 2026-09-16 on /lighter/fees/.

GRVT — Order-book maker/taker, nine tiers by 30-day volume; makers rebated from Level 1. Base tier: 0.045% taker, −0.0001% maker. Discounts: Tiers fall to −0.003% maker / 0.024% taker at $1 billion of 30-day volume; locking 2,500, 10,000 or 50,000 GRVT tokens in the Membership Program grants Level 2, 3 or 4. Multi-Asset Margin adds hourly interest on auto-borrowed USDT and a 0.1%–0.25% repayment fee on converted USDC; funding settles every 4 or 8 hours on most markets. Schedule verified 2026-09-21 on /grvt/fees/.

Base-tier rates answer one narrow question — what a small taker order costs on day one. Your maker/taker mix, volume tier and holding period decide the real number; the fee comparison lays all twelve venues side by side and the execution-cost tool adds live slippage on top.

Markets they share

In this site's market join, snapshot 2026-09-22, Lighter lists 214 perp markets and GRVT lists 186; 122 appear on both. The market index shows every asset with the venues that list it and each venue's published leverage, and the join is refreshed weekly by a fail-closed pipeline. Breadth is not depth: a listing says nothing about how much size a book absorbs, which the execution-cost tool measures live where a venue publishes its order book.

Token and points

• Lighter: LIT · live. Points: Unverified — Points Season 2; Retail track: 200,000 points/week, distributed Fridays for Wednesday – Tuesday activity. The docs do not state what points redeem for, and no points-to-LIT conversion is documented. LIT is live and bought back from fee revenue. The market-makers page says "Points Season 2 ended on December 26th 2025"; the retail page and the overview still describe weekly Season 2 distribution and have not been updated with an end date. The docs do not say whether the retail track continues, so the status stays unverified until they do.
• GRVT: GRVT — "an ERC-20 token on Ethereum L1 with a fixed, hard-capped supply", live since the 30 July 2026 TGE. Points: Active — Points programme (perp trading only) after a two-season airdrop; Seasons 1 and 2 carried 100,000,000 and 180,000,000 shares; the TGE article states the community airdrop "is fixed at 280,000,000 $GRVT", released in tranches over 12 months from 30 July 2026. Registration closed 27 July 2026; unregistered allocations were forfeited.. Docs: after multiplier elections "each share [is worth] approximately 0.6296 $GRVT". The rewards page lists a live points programme earned "from perpetual trading activity only"; what points earned after the token launch become is not stated on the pages read. The airdrop is complete and vesting; the row stays active only because the docs still describe a points programme with no stated conversion.

Both rows are restated from the points & airdrop tracker, which is re-read against each venue's docs on a 45-day cadence and never prices a point.

Where Lighter wins

Price and privacy of a different kind. Standard accounts pay 0% maker and 0% taker on every market, with a published Premium grid above that. Onboarding is a wallet signature; the docs state no identity-verification step, where GRVT's Terms make one a condition of opening an account. Settlement runs through validity proofs to Ethereum rather than a venue-operated chain, and the venue itself does not own the matching engine as a named company does at GRVT.

Where GRVT wins

Breadth and the maker side of the ladder. The public instrument list reaches AAPL, TSLA, NVDA, SPY, QQQ, gold, silver, oil, natural gas and pre-IPO names such as OPENAI and SPACEX, each on an order book and an RFQ venue; this site's market pages show which of those Lighter also lists. Makers are rebated from Level 1, spot trading runs beside the perps, and USDC can back USDT positions under Multi-Asset Margin. The token has a stated use: locking it moves an account up the fee ladder. The Hyperliquid vs GRVT page covers the custody model in detail.

What this site could not verify

• Lighter: KYC and access rules are not stated in the docs this site verified.
• Lighter: Whether Points Season 2 is still running: the market-makers page says it ended on 2025-12-26, the retail page has not been updated.
• Lighter: What points redeem for — no points-to-LIT conversion is documented.
• GRVT: Insurance fund size, the interest rate on auto-borrowed USDT, and the liquidation fee rate — none published on the pages read on 2026-09-21.
• GRVT: Whether the volume tier or the membership tier applies when both qualify — not stated.
• GRVT: MNT: listed as delisted in the help centre but still active with open interest on the API — excluded from this site's coverage pending a re-check.

Which to pick

For zero cost, no identity check and Ethereum settlement, Lighter. For stock, ETF, commodity or pre-IPO perps in one USDT account with a maker rebate, and if you accept KYC, an off-chain book, all-or-nothing liquidation and an insurance fund of unpublished size, GRVT. Both block the United States; GRVT also bars Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada. The Lighter review and the GRVT review carry the detail behind each cell.

Related comparisons

• Lighter vs Aster
• Lighter vs dYdX
• Lighter vs edgeX
• Lighter vs Paradex
• Lighter vs Extended
• Lighter vs Pacifica
• Lighter vs Variational
• Hyperliquid vs Lighter
• Hyperliquid vs GRVT

FAQ

Does either venue need KYC?

GRVT does: its User Agreement requires identity verification before an account is registered. Lighter's docs, as read by this site, describe wallet-based onboarding and state no identity step; that absence is recorded as unverified rather than as a promise.

Is GRVT decentralised?

Custody and settlement are on-chain; matching is not. Its Terms name Albatross Group Overseas S.A. as the entity that owns the central limit order book, and its litepaper says order and position data are not broadcast to the public chain.

Which has lower fees?

Lighter, at 0% both sides for Standard accounts. GRVT's takers pay 0.045% at Level 1, and its maker rebate of −0.0001% is smaller than the cost of a single taker fill on any comparable size.