How to start trading on Lighter

1. Create an account

1. You need an Ethereum wallet. You register a main Lighter account by signing a message that links your Ethereum address to Lighter, and you can add sub-accounts under the same wallet. source ↗
2. Your first credited deposit creates the account. source ↗
3. New accounts are Standard accounts with 0 maker / 0 taker fees. Premium and Plus accounts are opt-in and charge fees. source ↗

2. Deposit collateral

1. The recommended route is a Universal Deposit Address that accepts funds from Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon, BNB Chain, HyperEVM, Monad, Robinhood Chain, Solana, Tron or Bitcoin and credits them as USDC or ETH. Only USDC can go to the perps account. source ↗
2. Minimum deposits via that address are $5 for a new account ($3 for an existing account from EVM chains or Solana, $10 from Bitcoin). Send a little more than the minimum, because bridging and swapping can cost slippage. source ↗
3. Direct deposits on Ethereum mainnet go to Lighter's smart contract and have a minimum of 1 USDC (or equivalent) per deposit. source ↗

3. Open your first position

1. Lighter uses an order book. Order types include market, limit (with Post-Only, Reduce-Only, Good-'Til-Time and Immediate-or-Cancel options), stop-loss and take-profit (market or limit), and TWAP. source ↗
2. You can change leverage per market. A market can be set to isolated mode, which treats the position as a separate account; otherwise positions share cross margin. source ↗
3. Each market has its own maximum leverage, for example 50x on BTC and ETH. source ↗
4. Market orders fill at the best available book prices and can slip when liquidity is thin or prices move fast. source ↗

4. Know how liquidation works

1. Below initial margin the account enters pre-liquidation, where you cannot increase positions. Below maintenance margin the engine cancels your open orders and closes positions, and below the close-out margin it fully liquidates. source ↗
2. Liquidations use the mark price, which is a median of the order-book impact price, an oracle index plus premium, and centralized-exchange mark prices. source ↗

5. Withdraw

1. A secure withdrawal sends any asset (minimum 1 USDC equivalent) only to the wallet that owns the account and settles through Ethereum. Lighter usually claims it for you. source ↗
2. A fast withdrawal is USDC only, has a 4 USDC minimum and can go to any Ethereum address via a liquidity pool. Transfers between Lighter accounts are instant. source ↗

6. Common mistakes

1. Standard (free) accounts have a 300 ms delay on taker orders and on cancels or modifications. Sub-accounts cannot be deleted. source ↗
2. Stop-loss and take-profit orders trigger on the mark price, not the last traded price. source ↗
3. With the default Simple Trading Account, spot balances do not back perp positions. Unified Trading Accounts, which share USDC margin across spot and perps, can currently be enabled only on the web. source ↗

Before you trade

Perpetual futures use leverage: a small price move against you can liquidate your collateral. Start with a small amount and low leverage, and read the venue’s current fee and margin pages, which can change after this guide was checked.