News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily News: At the inaugural meeting of the U.S. CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee, Lighter CEO Vladimir Novakovski stated that DeFi has long been misunderstood and should not be viewed as an adversary to regulators. DeFi transactions are recorded on-chain in a verifiable manner, which helps regulators in areas such as transparency, consumer protection, and market fairness. Vladimir Novakovski noted that decentralized, verifiable finance has the potential to become an important part of the U.S. financial infrastructure in the future, particularly in terms of cybersecurity and operational resilience. He added that the industry should push for more technology to evolve toward open-source, verifiable tech stacks. He also stated that AI has the opportunity to drive financial democratization, allowing users to construct bundled trading or investment strategies through AI based on their own judgments about the macroeconomy, industries, and other fields—capabilities that were previously mainly available to high-net-worth individuals and professional fund managers.Vladimir Novakovski pointed out that the main risk AI faces in the financial sector is consumer protection risk—for example, users not understanding how AI models actually function, or models being promoted with misleading claims. Therefore, before AI models are deployed at scale for consumers, it is necessary to establish appropriate sandbox mechanisms and verify the validity and formal verifiability of the models.
Odaily Odaily: Lighter founder and CEO Vladimir Novakovski posted on X: "As the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary, I am proud to have been building Lighter here from the very beginning. This year, I have also started doing my small part — serving as a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Innovation Advisory Committee."Odaily Note: The Innovation Advisory Committee was established to advise the CFTC on complex issues at the intersection of technology, law, policy, and finance.
Robinhood has announced the official launch of the public mainnet for its proprietary Layer 2 network, Robinhood Chain. Built on the Arbitrum technology stack, the chain is positioned as an institution-grade, permissionless, AI-native network specifically designed for Real World Assets (RWA).Robinhood Chain's launch partners include Uniswap, Pleiades, Alchemy, BitGo, and Chainlink. Among them, Uniswap will deploy a dedicated AMM on the chain as the primary public liquidity protocol, while Pleiades will deploy its own AMM as the primary proprietary trading venue. The chain will also offer basic DeFi functionalities such as lending.Eligible users can trade tokenized stocks 24/7 on Robinhood Chain. Simultaneously, Robinhood Earn will introduce USDG-based decentralized lending products within the main app. In certain jurisdictions, the new version of Robinhood Wallet will also support access to Lighter's perpetual contract trading.Robinhood also announced the expansion of its European perpetual contract product range, its official entry into the Canadian market, and the acquisition of a Singapore Capital Markets Services license. Furthermore, Agentic Accounts for crypto trading are planned to begin rolling out in the US soon, allowing AI agents to participate in trading and fund management.Robinhood stated that this update represents its most ambitious global expansion and product vision to date, with the goal of establishing a more direct connection between traditional finance and DeFi, integrating stocks, crypto, RWA, perpetual contracts, and AI trading into a unified financial experience. (The Block)
Bankless founder David Hoffman posted on X, expressing regret for not buying more Lighter (LIT).Hoffman explained that the logic behind investing in Lighter is simple:1. Exchanges have always been the best business model in the crypto industry;2. Perpetual contracts are still a brand-new track, far from reaching maturity;3. Building an exchange based on zkL2 is currently the structurally optimal solution, offering high security, low operating costs, and high profit margins;4. The product itself is also the strongest on the market, with the lowest latency, the lowest execution costs, and full transparency;5. The engineering team is highly capable, having solved all the technical challenges;6. The company is headquartered in the United States, operates in compliance, and this market remains a largely untapped blue ocean;7. It also serves as an option betting on the "Tokenization of compliant assets";8. Founder Vlad is in the right circles, knows the right people, and has the ambition to do great things.