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Guide · By Stephan Kulik · Updated 2026-09-29

Real-world-asset perps on Lighter

Verified against Lighter's official docs on 2026-09-29. Lighter says market specifications "may be updated at the discretion of the Lighter team"; which stock and commodity tickers trade across all covered venues is on stock perps and commodity perps.

Lighter lists perpetual futures on stocks, indexes, commodities, currencies and a 10-year US government bond, and the docs say they are "tradeable 24/7". That last point is the whole design problem: the underlying markets close, the perps do not. The docs answer it with a pricing rule for when outside prices stop updating, a roll schedule for markets that track futures contracts, and a plain warning that "price volatility may increase at market open."

What is listed

74 rows on the specifications page read 2026-09-29; each row names the tracked underlying, an open-interest cap and an oracle, and most list Pyth Pro. All RWA markets support isolated and cross margin.

How the price is set when the market is closed

The docs name two sources: "external oracle feeds (e.g., Chainlink, Pyth, Stork, and other exchanges) and internal pricing." Oracles come first. When oracle data becomes stale, the docs say, "the pricing mechanism shifts from oracle-based pricing to internal pricing", and "as soon as an external price is available, the internal price is going to instantly converge to it."

The internal price is Lighter's own order-book impact price smoothed with a time-weighted moving average: a 30-minute constant for the index price, 2 minutes for the mark price. Both were originally capped at the last oracle price ± 1 ÷ leverage. From 2026-07-10 that cap was removed on 31 markets, including SPY, US500, QQQ, US100, XAU, XAG, NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, WTI and BRENTOIL, with internal prices still "validated against prices from other trading venues" to prevent manipulation. In practice this means a weekend or overnight price on those markets is set mainly by Lighter's own book, and can move further from Friday's close than the old cap allowed.

Leverage and liquidation off-hours

"Leverage does not change outside trading hours": the docs' example is a 10× gold long that stays 10× with no requirement to reduce it. RWAs are liquidated like every other market, now by the LLP and with standard liquidation fees (see how Lighter liquidates). Funding on RWA markets uses half the crypto premium multiplier, and one hundredth on pre-IPO and pre-market listings; the formula is on the fees page.

The futures roll: WTI, natural gas, Brent, copper and wheat

These markets track futures contracts, which expire. Lighter moves the price from the current month to the next "between the 5th and 10th business day", 20% per day: at 5:30 PM ET for WTI and natural gas, and 7:00 PM ET for Brent. The docs' August 2026 example runs 80/20 on 7 August to 0/100 on 13 August. If the next contract trades at a different price, which it usually does, the perp's price drifts toward it over those five days whether or not anything else moves.

FAQ

Do I own the stock or get dividends?

No. These are perpetual futures that track a price; the specifications describe what each one tracks, not a claim on the asset.

Why did my position move at the open?

Because the perp kept trading while the underlying was shut. When the oracle price returns, the internal price converges to it at once, and the docs warn volatility "may increase at market open."

Are pre-IPO markets different?

They are listed as "pre-ipo equity" (OpenAI and Anthropic) and use a much smaller funding multiplier. There is no public share price to anchor them, so read the market's own specification before trading one.

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