Ethereum enthusiasts are celebrating a significant milestone in the network's scaling efforts as the ecosystem's transactions per second (TPS) reached a record high of 24,192. This surge in transaction speed is attributed to the integration of Lighter, a high-performance Ethereum Layer-2 solution, into the transaction count.
Lighter, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange, utilizes custom zero-knowledge (ZK) circuits to ensure scalability, security, and transparency. These circuits verify critical functions such as order matching, position management, and liquidations on-chain, enabling verifiable, trustless execution with low-latency performance. As a ZK rollup, Lighter processes transactions off-chain and generates succinct proofs to verify the correctness of operations on Ethereum. This approach allows it to handle tens of thousands of orders and cancellations per second with millisecond latency.
Data from Growthepie indicates that Ethereum processed 24,192 transactions in a single second within the last 24 hours, marking the highest TPS recorded to date. Lighter has significantly outperformed the Base Chain, processing approximately 4,000 transactions per second compared to Base's 100 to 200.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and others have expressed enthusiasm on social media, noting that Ethereum is scaling as it continues to achieve new TPS records. Ryan Sean Adams, host of the Bankless podcast, attributed the increased scaling to the rise of Lighter and its extensive use of zero-knowledge proofs. He predicted that Layer-2 solutions are adding a 200x scaling factor to Ethereum and that TPS could reach 100,000 and eventually 1 million in the coming months.
Lighter launched its Ethereum Layer-2 mainnet in October 2025, opening the platform to all traders worldwide. The platform combines verifiable execution with near-centralized exchange performance, targeting both retail and professional traders seeking speed, security, and transparency. Restrictions such as invite-only access and capped deposits have been removed, allowing anyone to trade on the platform.
Lighter's architecture combines succinct execution proofs with Ethereum as the anchoring layer for both proofs and system state. Users can securely enter or exit directly through Ethereum, with all proofs verified publicly before any state updates occur. The platform's proving engine leverages new algorithms and optimized data structures for efficient exchange-operation proof generation. All exchange operations are executed deterministically via user-signed transactions.
While processing exchange operations, Lighter periodically publishes state update proposals to Ethereum. Each proposal transaction is accompanied by data blobs containing the details of the state transition, allowing users to independently reconstruct and verify their state. The posted data is highly compressed, enabling Lighter to publish state data directly to Ethereum at high scale without relying on third parties. A Sequencer coordinates first-in–first-out transaction ordering and provides soft finality, executing exchange operations and generating data consumed by other system components.
Despite its impressive speed, Lighter has experienced multiple network outages since its launch on October 1, drawing comparisons to Solana's early days. The Lighter team compensated nearly 3,900 wallets with $774,872 in USDC for an outage on October 28, one of the network's most significant disruptions.
The rise of Ethereum Layer-2 solutions has sparked discussions about their impact on the Ethereum mainnet's value accrual. Lighter offers zero fees for retail traders and competitive fees for high-frequency traders. Users can deposit assets into Lighter via Ethereum and place limit or market orders on the DEX. Trades are matched instantly, confirmed by the ZK engine, and settled on-chain after batch proof submission. Withdrawals and account management operate through the user dashboard, with all activity tracked on-chain and viewable in real time.
