Lighter Makes Case for DeFi in Fixed Income Markets

At Korea Blockchain Week 2026, Lighter CEO Vlad Novakovski made a case for DeFi to focus on fixed income markets. He argued that this area holds significant potential and is building towards it by launching products like the US10Y perpetual contract in August 2026.

The US10Y perp allows traders to bet on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury without an expiry date, with leverage of up to 20x. This product references outside data through oracles, which feed bond benchmarks onto the blockchain for smart contracts to use.

Lighter is a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures, often called perps. It uses a custom zero-knowledge rollup, built on Ethereum, and lists more than 190 markets spanning crypto, equities, commodities, and now fixed income products.