From Harvard at 18 to Building Crypto’s Fastest Exchange | Vlad, Lighter

What does it take to build an exchange that refuses to choose between speed, cost, security, verifiability and composability? Lighter founder Vlad Novakovski joins David to trace his path from international Olympiads and Harvard at 18 to Citadel, early machine learning, Lunchclub and an 18-month ZK engineering bet.

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 A Particular Set of Skills
11:33 Harvard at 18
19:03 Citadel and the Search for Alpha
25:14 Machine Learning Before the AI Boom
36:46 ​​Finding Elite Talent Early
41:39 The Lunchclub Matching Problem
45:11 Pivoting Into Lighter
51:18 The 18-Month ZK Engineering Bet
56:38 Lighter’s Five Pillars
1:00:04 A New Generation of Exchanges

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RESOURCES

Vlad Novakovski
https://x.com/vnovakovski

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