Vladimir Novakovski

Vladimir Novakovski is the founder and CEO of Lighter, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange built as a custom zero-knowledge Layer 2 on Ethereum, which he founded in 2022. In November 2025 Lighter raised $68 million led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Haun Ventures and Robinhood, reportedly valuing the company around $1.5 billion, and Lighter was later named the official perps partner of Robinhood Chain. A child immigrant from Russia, he competed on U.S. national teams for the International Olympiads in informatics and physics, entered Harvard at 16, and began working at Citadel at 18, spending roughly eight years in high-frequency trading before moving to Silicon Valley AI and fintech startups and eventually into crypto.

15 talks by Vladimir Novakovski