First and foremost: Jannies - I'm not shilling, I'm trying to have a discussion about the future of the Lighter project. Thank you for your service.I have been very bullish on lighter for months, and while I've given plenty of thought to the reasons it will fail or only be a small part of derivatives trading in say, 5 or 10 years, but today has made me think about it again. Is it really realistic to think Lighter will ever host mainstream trading? I thought since Coinbase and Robinhood were investors they will likely push customers towards it, but now I'm not sure. I will dive into this in the responses as I fear its too long for one post.
I feel like we're still a long time away from any regulated product offering Lighter directly because a regulator wants to know >who operates the venue (that they can go after, I don't think you can go after Lighter besides trying to ban it or ban regulated entities from using it)aka also>where that operator is incorporated>who its directors/managers are>which legal entity is responsible for the product>which regulator supervises it>how the operator can be investigated or sanctionedIt just seems like we're still a ways away from regulators putting their stamp of approval on a decentralized cryptographically verifiable clearing house, which lighter acts as. Then, from a game theory or business strategy perspective, I'm also not sure it makes sense for a Coinbase or Robinhood, or god forbid a tradfi app in 10 years to push its users (besides crypto-native) towards Lighter. In doing so, don't they give up owning the exchange infrastructure, regulatory licenses, institutional relationships, liquidity relationships, customer accounts, custody infrastructure, derivatives infrastructure, institutional connectivity, etc? All of this to say, in what world is lighter not boxed out of the most valuable mainstream retail distribution channels? It seems like attracting retail traders (then letting that retail attract market makers) is Lighter's main plan, but I think their TAM is relatively small if Robinhood, Coinbase, etc. isn't pushing their average customer towards Lighter.
