Lighter has launched a development test network compatible with EVM, with one-second blocks, which allows smart contracts to manage trading orders, while the developer documentation lists, among the test environment's limitations, dummy proofs and an unfinished asset recovery mechanism.
Axiom, the company that built the network together with Lighter, announced the release in a Yi Sun post on 16 October, describing an Ethereum-compatible environment connected to Lighter's perpetual futures and spot markets. The developer interface is publicly available, although teams need to request access to the network and are admitted in groups.
The lightweight EVM version for developers uses test markets and a private settlement chain
According to Axiom, the release includes new instances of Lighter EVM and Lighter Core — the exchange's order matching and risk management systems. The Core instance manages its own test markets, providing developers with an order book on the basis of which applications can be built and tested.
The release uses a L1 instance for development. The Lighter developer documentation states that a privately deployed blockchain chain is used as the settlement and data availability layer instead of Ethereum.
The Lighter documentation lists three current limitations, including that "the devnet version uses dummy ZK proofs for L1 finalization." The permissionless resource recovery mechanism, intended to recover resources in the event of a failure of normal processing, is not fully functional on the devnet.
The documentation states that Core data read queries work only from the latest block. Support for reading earlier blocks is planned in a future update.
The Axiom post separately describes the intended settlement architecture. OpenVM verifies Lighter EVM execution, while Lighter Core retains its existing custom zero-knowledge schemes. The OpenVM aggregation system combines proofs from both environments into a single proof for verification on Ethereum.
According to Axiom, both rollup modules use records of their state changes to reduce the amount of data they need to publish to Ethereum. Their architecture description provides for an asset recovery mechanism in the event of a failure of the sequencer or the proving mechanism, taking into account the developer network limitations specified in the Lighter documentation.
Smart contracts can read Core data and send trading orders
Axiom said that contracts can synchronously read information from Lighter Core through a built-in interface known as a read precompile. Queries covering accounts, balances, positions, orders, and market information are supported.
The process for handling trading instructions is different. Contracts can place, modify, and cancel orders in Core via asynchronous writes, which, according to Axiom, are executed within seconds. Contracts can then query the status of these instructions through the read interface.
A similar connection supports the transfer of data between Lighter EVM and Core. According to the launch announcement, developers can deposit funds from the development environment L1, move assets between the two Lighter environments, and withdraw them back to L1.
Axiom named rapid financing services, vaults, and quote request platforms as applications that developers could build using the connection to Core. The proposed applications would use the same connection to Core that supports reading market information, sending trading orders, and transferring assets between the two environments.
As for development, Axiom said the network supports the standard Ethereum interface JSON-RPC, allowing teams to use Foundry, Hardhat, Viem, and Ether. The developer network targets EVM based on the Fusaka fork BPO2, uses ETH to pay gas fees, and has a maximum gas limit per block of 17 million.
The Lighter chain setup documentation separately specifies a block creation time of EVM one second and the same maximum gas limit. Separate identifiers are assigned for EVM and Core, with the Core identifier used when signing Core transactions. The chain identifier for EVM is 19529, and Core uses 300 on the developer network.
The blockchain reference lists the Safe wallet, Multicall3, and Permit2 contracts among the third-party contracts included in the system at launch for developers' convenience. These tools differ from the contracts owned by the protocol, which handle messages, token transfers, and fees, the latter being part of the network's own infrastructure.
