$50 Million Funding Ignites Airdrop Expectations, Variational Becomes the New Focus of PerpDEX
Original author: Asher, Odaily Planet Daily
A funding announcement has made Perp DEX Variational a hot topic in the airdrop community.
Last night, Variational announced the completion of a $50 million Series A round led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.
Affected by this news, Variational's pre-market price surged over 36% briefly, reaching as high as $6.9 (corresponding to a fully diluted valuation of $690 million), and has since pulled back, currently trading at $6.1 (corresponding to a fully diluted valuation of $610 million).
Variational pre-market price movement
Additionally, the probability of the event "Variational's FDV exceeding $500 million one day after launch" on the prediction platform predict.fun has risen to 57%; the probability of the event "Variational's FDV exceeding $1 billion one day after launch" has risen to 27%.
Prediction event on predict.fun: "Variational FDV one day after launch"
Next, let’s walk through Variational, the rules for earning points through trading, and when the TGE will take place.
Variational: A zero-fee perpetual DEX deployed on Arbitrum
Variational is a Perp DEX platform deployed on Arbitrum, headquartered in the Cayman Islands, with its core product being Omni. In simple terms, users can trade major crypto assets such as BTC, ETH, and SOL on Variational, as well as a broader range of perpetual contract markets including tail assets, stocks, commodities, and volatility indices.
Compared to most Perp DEXs, Variational’s most straightforward feature is zero trading fees. When trading on Omni, the platform does not charge standard trading fees; the main costs come from the spread, slippage, funding rates, and deposit/withdrawal fees.
In addition, Variational’s underlying design differs from traditional perpetual DEXs. Rather than relying solely on internal order matching or a single liquidity pool to absorb trades, it connects to multiple liquidity sources through a “brokerage-style” model, including traditional financial market makers, crypto-native market makers, and major exchanges, to address the “liquidity cold start” problem on-chain.
According to DefiLlama data, Variational has achieved over $16 billion in trading volume over the past month, with open interest exceeding $800 million, ranking fourth among Perp DEXs. Notably, among the top five Perp DEXs by open interest, Variational is the only one that has not yet issued a token.
Prep DEX Open Interest Ranking
Earn points through trading, Detailed explanation of the Variational rules
For regular users, the most straightforward way to participate in Variational right now is still trading to earn points.
Variational officially launched the Omni Points program on December 17, 2025, and awarded 3 million points retroactively to historical trading users as of December 11, 2025. Thereafter, points will be distributed every Friday at 00:00 UTC, based on platform activity up to the previous Thursday at 00:00 UTC.
In addition, according to the document, the project commits approximately 50% of the token supply to the community (through various mechanisms such as points and revenue sharing, rather than a single airdrop), and plans to use at least 30% of protocol revenue for VAR token buybacks and burns.
The core of the Variational points system is not complex: the more active your trading, the greater your chance to earn more points. However, rather than distributing points solely based on trading volume, Variational incorporates a design that prioritizes trading quality, including:
· Points are directly tied to user trading activity: The platform’s rewards page states that the points program is designed to reward protocol users, who can earn points through platform activities. The official team also reserves the right to adjust points and address non-organic behavior, meaning obvious spam, arbitrage-based point farming, or similar activities may be subject to reduction or removal.
· Early users receive a bonus: Accounts that traded before the points program launch receive a 10% bonus on points earned thereafter;
· Introduced the Reward Tiers system: Users' total trading volume over the past 30 days determines their tier, calculated as personal trading volume plus 0.2 times referred 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%, and Infinity at 5%.
Bronze requires a Total Volume of $1 million over the past 30 days, Silver requires $5 million, Gold requires $25 million, Platinum requires $100 million, Diamond requires $750 million, and Infinity requires $2.5 billion;
· Inviting others also earns you points and USDC rewards: Referrers receive 5% of the spread paid by referred users in USDC, and for every 10 points earned by a referred user, the referrer earns 1 point.
From a rules perspective, Variational's points design favors organic trading over pure volume manipulation. For users seeking rewards, the focus should not merely be on completing a single trade, but on evaluating whether their trading frequency, capital efficiency, position risk, and points cost are aligned.
When will Variational conduct its TGE?
Currently, Variational has not announced a specific TGE date for VAR. However, according to information disclosed in the official documentation, token distribution will continue at the latest until the end of Q3 2026. Therefore, the community generally expects the TGE to occur between Q3 and Q4 of this year.
Data source: Variational official documentation
In addition, the pricing in prediction markets leans more toward Q4. Polymarket data shows that the probability of the event "Variational will launch its token before September 30 this year" is only 26%, while the probability of the event "Variational will launch its token before December 31 this year" is 78%.
Polymarket's prediction event for "When will Variational have its TGE?"
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