⚠︎ Risk warning: leveraged derivatives on unregulated platforms — you can lose everything you deposit. Not investment advice.
Lighter vs Nado (2026): Two Order Books, Two Fee Models
Both run a public central-limit order book and both list stock and FX perps beside crypto. Lighter is a zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum whose Standard accounts pay nothing. Nado matches in an off-chain sequencer on Ink and settles in USDT0, with spot, perps and borrowing netted in one unified margin account.
Verdict
Lighter on cost and settlement; Nado on cross-product margin. Lighter Standard charges 0% maker and 0% taker and settles through validity proofs to Ethereum. Nado starts at 0.035% taker and 0.01% maker, falling with volume, but lets spot holdings and borrowing offset perp risk in one account. Nado's docs publish no audits, and losses beyond its insurance fund can reach USDT0 balances.
At a glance
| Lighter | Nado | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | zk-rollup on Ethereum | Off-chain sequencer + on-chain clearinghouse · Ink L2 |
| Custody | Non-custodial (rollup) | On-chain contracts on Ink; the sequencer "holds no custody" |
| KYC | Not stated | No identity step for wallet or social login; the card route via Fun.xyz may ask for basic KYC |
| Base perp fees | 0% (Standard) / 0.0280% (Premium) / 0% (Standard) / 0.0040% (Premium) t/m WINNER | 0.035% → 0.015% (by tier) / 0.01% → −0.008% (by tier) t/m |
| Funding | 1h period · P2P | Hourly · capped at ±2% per day |
| Token | LIT · live WINNER | None named in the docs |
| Points programme | Unverified · Points Season 2 | Active · Nado Points — Season 2 (from 21 May 2026) |
| Operating entity / access | US, Canada, UK among 14 barred (Terms) | Spira Arc Inc. (Panama); restricts US, Canada, Panama |
facts verified · each venue's official docs Every cell restates a claim on one of this site's pages: /compare/hyperliquid-vs-lighter/ , /lighter/fees/ , /eu/lighter/ , /nado/ , /nado/how-to-start/ , /nado/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/.
Nado — Order-book maker/taker (off-chain sequencer, on-chain clearinghouse on Ink); seven VIP tiers on 30-day spot + perp volume. Base tier: 0.035% → 0.015% (by tier) taker, 0.01% → −0.008% (by tier) maker. Numerics are VIP 0 ($0 of 30-day volume), read from the fee-schedule image; the public gateway API carries the same 0.00035 / 0.0001 on 76 of 82 perps. FX perps use a lower schedule from 0.70 bps taker / 0.20 bps maker. Discounts: VIP tiers on 30-day volume reach 1.5 bps taker and a −0.8 bp maker rebate at $1B; referral codes with a kickback return part of fees. Flat sequencer fees apply (1 USDT0 per withdrawal, 1 USDT0 per liquidation); the fees page's worked example still calls the top tier "$5B+", superseded by the Season 2 schedule. Schedule verified 2026-09-30 on /nado/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 20 venues side by side and the execution-cost tool adds live slippage on top.
Markets they share
In this site's market join, snapshot 2026-10-05, Lighter lists 210 perp markets and Nado lists 75; 69 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.
- Nado: None named in the docs. Points: Active — Nado Points — Season 2 (from 21 May 2026); Weekly pool scales with protocol volume from a 300K-point floor to a 950K-point cap; your share depends on trading activity "with adjustments for fee tier and toxicity". Points also come from NLP deposits and referrals. Season 1 balances, Trader Tier history and NFT multipliers carry over.. Docs: points "are non-transferable, cannot be traded, and are reflected directly within the Nado app". No token and no conversion are named. Season 2 cut the Season 1 bonus pool from 8,000,000 to 2,000,000 points, including 4,000,000 reserved for trading competitions set to 0 — the programme can change after points are earned.
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
Fees and settlement. Standard accounts pay nothing on every market. Settlement rolls up to Ethereum with validity proofs. LIT is live. Lighter's docs describe wallet-based onboarding with no identity step, recorded as unverified rather than promised.
Where Nado wins
One account for everything. Nado's unified margin nets spot, perps and money-market borrowing, so a hedge needs less collateral, and tokenized stocks can count as margin. Its fee tiers reach a maker rebate at high volume. The Hyperliquid vs Nado page covers the model and its risks.
What this site could not verify
- Lighter: KYC — no statement either way 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.
- Nado: Audits — the docs publish no audit or security page.
- Nado: Maximum leverage — "up to 20x" on one page, 40x for FX on another; the API publishes risk weights, not a cap.
- Nado: What points convert to — no token or conversion is named.
Which to pick
For zero commission and Ethereum-anchored settlement, Lighter. For spot, perps and borrowing in one netted account, and after accepting unpublished audits and loss socialization, Nado. Both restrict the United States and Canada among others. The Lighter review and the Nado review carry the detail.
Related comparisons
- Lighter vs Aster
- Lighter vs dYdX
- Lighter vs edgeX
- Lighter vs Paradex
- Lighter vs Extended
- Lighter vs Pacifica
- Lighter vs GRVT
- Lighter vs Variational
- Lighter vs ApeX Omni
- Lighter vs SoDEX
- Lighter vs Veranta
- Lighter vs Vest Markets
- Lighter vs Derive
- Hyperliquid vs Lighter
- Hyperliquid vs Nado
FAQ
How far apart are the fees?
At the entry level, all of Nado's fee: Lighter Standard charges 0%, Nado VIP 0 charges 0.035% taker and 0.01% maker.
Which is safer to hold a balance on?
On the evidence this site has, Lighter: it settles through validity proofs to Ethereum. Nado's docs describe socializing losses to USDT0 balances if its insurance fund is exhausted, and publish no audits.
Do they list the same markets?
The shared-markets count above comes from this site's coverage snapshot, which reads both venues' public market lists.
affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you · methodology