Bitwise bets on Lighter, the perp DEX trying to dethrone Hyperliquid without charging a dime 🎯

Bitwise Asset Management has rolled out a European exchange-traded product tracking Lighter, giving traditional investors exposure to LIT, the native token of a decentralized perpetual-futures platform positioning itself against market leader Hyperliquid. The Bitwise Lighter Staking ETP (BLIT) began trading on Deutsche Börse Xetra on Wednesday, according to Bitwise, and is the first ETP to track LIT.

BLIT is fully backed by LIT held in cold storage and carries a 0.85% annual expense ratio, the company said. It is currently structured to track LIT's price without generating staking rewards; Bitwise stated staking will begin once the product accumulates enough assets under management to operate the process efficiently.

The launch extends a string of crypto ETP offerings from Bitwise, including a Hyperliquid staking ETP introduced in Europe in April. Lighter runs as an Ethereum-based decentralized exchange focused on perpetual futures, using zero-knowledge proofs to verify trades while letting users retain control of assets rather than depositing them with a centralized venue. The platform also offers zero-fee trading for retail users. According to CoinGecko data, Lighter recorded nearly $1.8 billion in trading volume over the past 24 hours.

Lighter gained a distribution foothold in July when Robinhood integrated the exchange into Robinhood Chain, the company's Ethereum layer-2 network, allowing eligible Robinhood Wallet users to trade perpetual futures settled via Lighter smart contracts. Hyperliquid, by contrast, operates on its own layer-1 blockchain and controlled more than 61% of decentralized perpetual futures trading, according to data cited by The Motley Fool. In May, Circle announced an agreement to expand USDC usage on Hyperliquid, with roughly $5 billion in USDC held on the platform at the time, according to Coinbase.