The easy answer is that Robinhood is an everything platform, and Lighter is highly optimized for perps specifically (altho Lighter roadmap is to also be an everything platform - Perps/Options/Spot/Onramps via
@fun)
Lighter has more assets, including more pre-IPO markets. Lighter doesn't require KYC sign up, and Robinhood Perps are for only a closed group of users in the EU.
By contrast, Lighter is VPN blocked in the US.
But beyond that:
Transparency / Auditability
- zkLighter (Lighters zk system) is fully auditable by end users, so anyone can permissionlessly verify the exchange is following its own rules.
Order matching, funding, risk checks, liquidations etc are defined in zk circuits, so Ethereum verifies that they followed Lighter's rules before accepting state updates. Bullish crypto ethos!
This earns the trust of traders and market makers in size, because everyone can trust that there is no privileged party trading against users (i.e. Alameda & FTX)
Latency
- Lighter's got the best latency of any perp exchange.
latency.perps.trading/
Execution cost (fees slippage)
- Lighter has the best fee structure. Maybe Robinhood (when it eventually rolls out perps) also has a 0-fee structure too, but that means a tie between RH and Lighter, not a RH win.
- You can see Lighter vs Hyperliquid execution cost at the link below. Lighter is beating Hyperliquid in execution.
I'd make the claim that Lighter is beating Robinhood in execution too, but I wouldn't know because
1. I can't access Robinhood perps and
2. I wouldn't be able to audit it anyways
lighter-vs-hyperliquid.verce…
Further fee structure resources:
x.com/trevor_flipper/status/…
x.com/trevor_flipper/status/…
Having the best fee structure also means that consumer apps can choose to use Lighter as a backend, saving on time to market and internal dev cost, without sacrificing much economics.
But thats an answer to "Why would I buy
$LIT instead of
$HOOD?" which you didn't ask but i'll answer anyway.
idk if lighter ever reaches out to phantom or if phantom reaches out to lighter (hard to change platforms given users has active positions) but i found this chart quite interesting