AI Traders, Legal Perps & Tokenized Stocks - Lighter Founder Vlad Novakovski

Summary

Thread Guy interviews Lighter founder Vlad Novakovski about the evolution of on-chain trading, tokenized stocks, legal perpetuals in the US, the importance of buybacks, and new markets like AI compute. They discuss the democratization of finance and Lighter's roadmap including options and partnerships with Robinhood and Telegram.

• Trading landscape in 5-10 years will feature greater access, cross-margin between spot, perps and options on decentralized platforms.
• AI agents will augment human traders rather than fully replace discretionary decision-making.
• Tokenized stocks are happening but perps overtook spot first; multiple issuers will compete, not one winner.
• CFTC approved centralized perps (Kalshi) for the first time in 10 years; decentralized perp licenses are the next frontier.
• Buyback mechanisms are a clean way to accrue value to token holders, and Lighter will keep buying back LIT with revenue.
• Lighter launched the first on-chain H100s compute perpetual to enable AI compute hedging.
• Lighter's roadmap includes options, Lighter VM, AI-enhanced trading features, and new order types.