Who else wants freedom?

Written by: KarenZ, Foresight News

32% of the cake has been sliced.

On September 24th, Variational announced that it will conduct its TGE in Q4 2026, with 32% of the total supply allocated for the VAR Genesis airdrop.

What has the airdrop plan clarified?

First, let’s discuss the airdrop that the market is most concerned about.

Variational has provided a more comprehensive token distribution plan for the first time:

• 32% for founder distribution, which will be airdropped based on the proportion of Variational points held by users, fully unlocked at TGE;
• 18% goes into the ecological reserve, to be used by the Variational Foundation for ecological development;
• 50% allocated to the team and investors, locked for 12 months after TGE, and then unlocked over at least 3 years; the respective proportions of the team and investors will be announced before TGE.

This clarifies the previous official document's statement that "about 50% of the tokens will be allocated to the community": the 32% Genesis airdrop plus the 18% ecological reserve totals exactly 50%.

The basic calculation logic for the airdrop can be expressed as:

The amount of VAR an individual receives = Individual points ÷ Total effective points × 32% of total tokens

The official also stipulates that an account must hold at least 1 point and sign the corresponding service terms to be eligible for the distribution; unclaimed Genesis distribution tokens will be burned.

Each week, 150,000 points will still be distributed until TGE. This means that if a user's points do not increase while the total network points continue to grow, their share in the 32% airdrop pool will decrease.

Previously, the Dune airdrop simulator created by Entropy Advisors assumed point activity would conclude in the third quarter, with a final total of 9.15 million points, simulating the value of points under different FDV and airdrop ratios. If the FDV reaches $1 billion, the price per point would be $37.84.

Now that the 32% ratio is confirmed, but the point activity has been extended until TGE, thus the 9.15 million cannot be directly considered the final denominator. The "price per point" and "expected airdrop value" in the simulator remain just scenario calculations, not official valuations or redemption commitments.

Another dashboard made by Entropy Advisors shows that the total number of addresses on the Variational platform is 189,500, of which there are 123,300 active addresses.

In terms of token value capture, Variational’s latest announcement stated that it plans to use all "revenue entering the protocol treasury" for the repurchase and destruction of $VAR. It is important to note that this does not mean that all revenue from Omni will be used to repurchase tokens.

Currently, official documents show that the protocol treasury temporarily receives 20% of the OLP (Omni Liquidity Provider) spread revenue, and this ratio may still be adjusted; specific repurchase frequency, execution methods, and token uses will be disclosed further before TGE.

From a quantitative trading team to about $61.8 million in financing

Variational’s two co-founders, Lucas Schuermann and Edward Yu, met at Columbia University. They founded the quantitative fund Qu Capital in 2017, which was acquired by Digital Currency Group in 2019. After that, they both worked in engineering and quantitative trading roles at Genesis Trading and left Genesis in 2021 to start Variational.

The project disclosed a $10.3 million seed round of financing in 2024, led by Bain Capital Crypto and Peak XV Partners, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly, Hack VC, North Island Ventures, and others. In June 2025, Variational secured an additional $1.5 million in strategic financing, with investors including Mirana Ventures, Caladan, and Zoku Ventures.

In May 2026, Variational completed approximately $50 million in Series A financing, led by Dragonfly, with Bain Capital Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, and others continuing to participate.

By simply summing the publicly disclosed rounds, the total financing amount is approximately $61.8 million. The Series A financing was announced alongside its RWA strategy: Variational aims to connect the liquidity of traditional financial institutions and existing trading venues to the blockchain, rather than starting from scratch to cultivate an order book for each product, stock, or index market.

This is also key to understanding Variational: its core capability is not just the contract interface or points system, but rather pricing, hedging, and cross-market liquidity integration. Order book platforms need to wait for buyers and sellers to place orders; Variational allows OLP to quote directly to users, and then hedge risks in centralized exchanges, DEXs, or traditional markets. This model can quickly expand long-tail markets, but also makes the pricing, hedging, and risk control capabilities of OLP particularly important.

What recent progress has Variational made?

As of now, Variational's official documentation shows that Omni has covered over 500 cryptocurrency and traditional asset markets, allowing users to trade perpetual contracts through a cross-margin account. The market range displayed on its official website includes cryptocurrencies, stocks, commodities, and indices, with a maximum leverage of 50 times.

A more significant recent change is Swaps. Variational’s Swap is a linear derivative that tracks the total return of the underlying asset, with liquidity coming from traditional financial institutions.

On September 23rd, Variational stated that traders have established positions exceeding $5 million through Swaps, with reported comprehensive execution costs below 1 basis point. This is data disclosed by the project team, indicating its intention to serve large transactions.

According to the latest plan, Variational will end the Omni private testing before TGE, open the public mainnet, expand Swaps, release trading APIs, and disclose more detailed repurchase mechanisms and token usage. The official also mentioned that the delay of TGE to Q4 is related to "significant partnerships," but the counterparty and specific content have not yet been disclosed.

Another product that needs to be distinguished is Variational Pro. It is aimed at institutions and professional traders, planning to support options, structured products, and large OTC transactions, allowing multiple market makers to compete for quotes. However, according to official documents, Pro is currently not online and should not be treated as a product that has already generated business revenue.

How does Variational perform in terms of data?

On September 24th, 2026, I accessed Variational's official public statistics API and obtained the following snapshot:

• 24-hour trading volume is approximately $3.856 billion;
• Open interest is approximately $1.739 billion;
• 24-hour active accounts are 17,349;
• Officially reported TVL is approximately $22.2 million;
• Number of queryable markets is 552.
• Treasury value is $8.81 million.

The incentive points may affect trading frequency. Compared to daily trading volume, what is worth monitoring continuously are open interest, treasury revenue, trading retention after the points end, and OLP's performance in hedging and settlement under extreme market conditions.

Conclusion

What is most distinctive about Variational is its different judgment on the structure of on-chain derivatives markets: Rather than rebuilding every order book on-chain, it is better to use RFQ, professional market making, and external hedging to directly connect existing liquidity into on-chain settlement.

The advantage of this model is rapid market expansion and the ability to cover more long-tail assets while isolating risks in different settlement pools; its constraints are equally clear—currently, all transactions in Omni have OLP as the counterparty. If there are issues with OLP's pricing, hedging, or capital management, independent settlement pools can reduce the risk contagion among different users but cannot eliminate counterparty bad debts out of thin air.

From the token perspective, the 32% Genesis airdrop that is fully unlocked is quite direct for points users; the tokens for the team and investors are locked for 12 months first and then unlocked over the long term, which also reduces short-term release pressure. However, how the ecological reserve is used, the respective proportions of the team and investors, how repurchases are executed, and what other uses VAR may have outside of repurchase and destruction still need to be disclosed before TGE.