Key Highlights
- Telegram’s integrated wallet now supports perpetual futures trading through a partnership with decentralized exchange Lighter
- Traders can access leverage up to 50x on more than 50 assets spanning bitcoin, ether, commodities like gold and oil, plus equities and ETFs
- The service aims to reach Telegram’s user base of over 150 million registered accounts, with emphasis on emerging economies
- Availability excludes users in the United States and United Kingdom at this stage
- Lighter, holding a $1.5 billion valuation, operates without trading fees and will collaborate with Wallet in Telegram on loyalty initiatives
Telegram’s native cryptocurrency wallet has unveiled perpetual futures trading capabilities, enabling users to execute leveraged trades directly within the messaging platform. The functionality became operational on April 2, 2026.
The functionality is facilitated through Lighter, a decentralized exchange operating on Ethereum with a $1.5 billion market valuation following its $68 million capital raise. Among decentralized perpetual futures platforms ranked by trading volume, Lighter currently holds the fourth position.
Traders can access over 50 different assets with leverage options extending to 50x. The available instruments encompass bitcoin, ether, commodities such as oil and gold, traditional equities, and exchange-traded funds. All transactions process through a custodial wallet embedded natively within Telegram’s infrastructure.
Development of this capability was handled by The Open Platform, the organization responsible for creating Wallet in Telegram. According to CEO Andrew Rogozov, the primary objective centers on streamlining the trading experience to match the simplicity of messaging.
“Even my mother can start using this wallet,” Rogozov stated.
Wallet in Telegram boasts a registration base exceeding 150 million users. A significant portion of these registrations occurred throughout the tap-to-earn mini-application surge in 2024. The Open Platform now anticipates converting a subset of these registered users into actively trading participants.
Perpetual futures represent derivative contracts enabling traders to speculate on asset price movements without contract expiration dates. These instruments have emerged as the dominant trading product within cryptocurrency markets. Decentralized perpetual futures volume reached approximately $8 trillion throughout 2025, with monthly volumes surpassing $1 trillion during each of the year’s final four months.
The Selection Process: Why Lighter Beat Competitors
The Open Platform conducted evaluations of three competing platforms before finalizing its partnership with Lighter: Hyperliquid, Lighter, and Aster. The ultimate selection hinged on fee structures, incentive programs, and target demographic alignment.
Lighter operates on a zero-fee trading model. While Hyperliquid does impose fees and provides superior liquidity depth, Rogozov emphasized that liquidity differences remain negligible for retail-scale transactions on popular trading pairs.
Hyperliquid, despite commanding market leadership with over 200,000 active participants, serves a different demographic. Lighter’s strategy through this Telegram collaboration targets less sophisticated traders entering the market.
The partnership encompasses collaborative loyalty programming. Lighter will fund trading competition seasons where the platform’s most active participants receive LIT token rewards. Lighter’s backing includes prominent investors such as Founders Fund, Ribbit Capital, and Robinhood.
United States and United Kingdom territories remain excluded from this initial deployment. The Open Platform’s strategic focus centers on emerging and frontier economies where conventional brokerage infrastructure remains underdeveloped or inaccessible.
Upcoming Features and Expansion Plans
The Open Platform has outlined plans for additional features including referral systems, social profit-and-loss tracking within Telegram chat environments, and copy trading functionality. The roadmap also includes AI-powered trading agents that interface with wallets through Telegram’s bot infrastructure.
Cryptocurrency trading bots operating on Solana generated $700 million in fee revenue throughout 2024. TOP aims to capture similar activity levels within Telegram’s ecosystem, substituting perpetual futures for meme token speculation.
In parallel developments across the industry, Bitget Wallet has incorporated Hyperliquid-supported markets providing continuous trading access for commodities, equities, and tokenized real-world assets.
Lighter has simultaneously broadened its product offerings beyond derivatives recently, incorporating spot trading functionality and perpetual futures for equities with 24/5 availability.
