Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Asher (@Asher_0210)
A funding announcement has made Perp DEX Variational the hot topic in the airdrop farming community.
Last night, Variational announced the completion of a $50 million Series A funding round, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures. Influenced by this news, Variational's pre-market price surged over 36% briefly, hitting $6.9 at one point (corresponding to an FDV of $690 million). It has since pulled back and is currently quoted at $6.1 (corresponding to an FDV of $610 million).
Variational pre-market price movement
Additionally, the probability for the event “Variational's FDV exceeds $500 million one day after listing” on prediction platform predict.fun has risen to 57%; the probability for “Variational's FDV exceeds $1 billion one day after listing” has risen to 27%.
Prediction event for "Variational FDV one day after listing" on predict.fun
Next, Odaily Planet Daily will introduce Variational, its trade-to-earn points rules, and the TGE timeline.
Variational: Zero-Fee Perp DEX Deployed on Arbitrum
Variational is a Perp DEX platform deployed on Arbitrum. The company is headquartered in the Cayman Islands, and its core product is Omni. In simple terms, users can trade perpetual contracts for mainstream crypto assets like BTC, ETH, and SOL on Variational, as well as for long-tail assets, stocks, commodities, volatility indices, and more.
Compared to most Perp DEXs, the most obvious feature of Variational is zero transaction fees. When trading on Omni, the platform does not charge regular transaction fees. The main costs come from spreads, slippage, funding rates, and deposit/withdrawal fees.
Furthermore, Variational's underlying design differs from traditional Perp DEXs. It does not rely solely on internal platform matching or a single liquidity pool to handle trades. Instead, it connects to multi-source liquidity through a "brokerage-like" model, including traditional financial market makers, crypto-native market makers, and major trading platforms, to solve the "liquidity cold start" problem in on-chain markets.
According to DefiLlama data, Variational's trading volume over the past month has exceeded $16 billion, and its current open interest exceeds $800 million, ranking fourth in the Perp DEX sector. Notably, among the top five Perp DEXs by open interest, Variational is the only platform that has not yet issued a token.
Perp DEX open interest ranking
Trade-to-Earn Points: Detailed Rules for Variational
For ordinary users, the most direct way to participate in Variational currently is still through trading to earn points.
Variational officially launched the Omni Points Program on December 17, 2025, and retroactively distributed 3 million points to historical traders at launch, covering activity up to December 11, 2025. Since then, points are distributed every Friday at 00:00 UTC, accounting for platform activity from the previous cycle ending Thursday at 00:00 UTC.
Additionally, according to the documentation, the project commits to allocating approximately 50% of the token supply to the community (through points, revenue sharing, and other mechanisms, not solely airdrops), while also planning to use at least 30% of protocol revenue for VAR token buybacks and burns.
The core of Variational's points system is not complicated: the more active the trading, the greater the chance to earn more points. However, Variational does not distribute points solely based on trading volume; it incorporates designs that favor trading quality. Specifics include:
- Points are directly related to user trading activity: The platform rewards page indicates that the points program is designed to reward protocol users, who can earn points through platform activities. The official team reserves the right to adjust points and address non-organic behavior, meaning that obvious meaningless volume farming or arbitrage-style point farming may be subject to reduction or disqualification later;
- Early users receive an extra bonus: Accounts that traded before the points program launched receive a 10% point bonus on subsequently earned points;
- Introduction of a Reward Tiers system: A user's total trading volume over the past 30 days affects their tier, calculated as personal trading volume plus 0.2 times the invited trading volume. Different tiers correspond to different point multipliers: Iron at 0%, Bronze at 0.5%, Silver at 1%, Gold at 2%, Platinum at 3%, Diamond at 4%, Infinity at 5%. The thresholds are: Bronze requires $1 million Total Volume in the past 30 days, Silver $5 million, Gold $25 million, Platinum $100 million, Diamond $750 million, Infinity $2.5 billion;
- Referrals also bring points and USDC rewards: Referrers receive 5% USDC of the spreads paid by the referred users. Additionally, whenever a referred user earns 10 points, the referrer earns 1 point.
Judging from the rules, Variational's points design leans more towards organic trading rather than pure volume farming. For airdrop farmers, the focus is not just on completing a single transaction, but on considering whether their trading frequency, capital efficiency, position risk, and points cost align.
When Will Variational Conduct Its TGE?
Currently, Variational has not announced a clear TGE date for VAR. However, based on information disclosed in the official documentation, points distribution will continue at least until the end of Q3 2026. Therefore, the community generally expects the TGE to occur in Q3 to Q4 of this year.
Data source: Variational official documentation
Furthermore, prediction markets lean towards Q4. Polymarket data shows the probability for the event "Variational will launch its token before September 30 this year" is only 26%, while the probability for "Variational will launch its token before December 31 this year" is 78%.
Polymarket prediction event "When will Variational TGE?"
