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The Top 5 Perpetual DEXs with No Native Token: After Raising $50 Million in Funding, Variational Becomes the New DeFi Darling

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Variational has not yet announced the TGE date, with market predictions leaning towards Q4 of this year.

Original Title: "$50 Million Funding Ignites Airdrop Expectations, Variational Becomes PerpDEX New Focus"
Original Author: Asher, Odaily Planet Daily

A funding announcement has made Perp DEX Variational the center of attention in the community.

Yesterday evening, 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.

Following this news, Variational's pre-market price surged over 36%, reaching a high of $6.9 (equivalent to a fully diluted valuation of $6.9 billion), but has since retraced and is currently trading at $6.1 (equivalent to a fully diluted valuation of $6.1 billion).

Variational Pre-Market Price Movement

In addition, on the prediction platform predict.fun, the probability of the event "Variational's FDV exceeds $500 million one day after listing" has increased to 57%; the probability of the event "Variational's FDV exceeds $1 billion one day after listing" has increased to 27%.

Predict.fun Prediction Event for "Variational's FDV One Day After Listing"

Next, let's delve into Variational, the trading to earn points system, and when the TGE will take place.

Variational: Zero-Fee Perp 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 mainstream crypto assets such as BTC, ETH, SOL, as well as a variety of other assets including long-tail assets, stocks, commodities, and volatility indices in perpetual contract markets on Variational.

Compared to most Perp DEX platforms, Variational's most distinctive feature is zero trading fees. When trading on Omni, users are not charged regular transaction fees. The primary costs come from the spread, slippage, funding rates, and deposit/withdrawal fees.

Furthermore, Variational's underlying design differs from traditional Perp DEX platforms. It does not rely solely on internal matching or a single liquidity pool to facilitate trades, but utilizes a "brokerage-style" model to connect multiple sources of liquidity, including traditional financial market makers, crypto-native liquidity providers, and mainstream exchanges, addressing on-chain market "liquidity bootstrapping" issues.

According to DefiLlama data, Variational's trading volume has surpassed $16 billion in the past month, with current open interest exceeding $800 million, ranking fourth in the Perp DEX space. Notably, among the top five Perp DEX platforms by open interest, Variational is the only platform that has not issued its own token.

Perp DEX Open Interest Scale Ranking

Trade to Earn Points: Variational Rules Explained

For the average user, the most direct way to participate in Variational is currently to trade and earn points.

Variational officially launched the Omni Points program on December 17, 2025, and distributed 3 million points to historical trading users in a one-time retrospective issuance, covering activity up to December 11, 2025. Subsequently, points will be distributed every Friday at 00:00 UTC, based on the platform's activity for the previous period ending at 00:00 UTC on Thursday.

Furthermore, according to the document, the project commits to allocating about 50% of the token supply to the community (through mechanisms such as staking, revenue sharing, and various other methods rather than a single airdrop), while also planning to use at least 30% of protocol revenue for VAR token buyback and burn.

The core of the Variational Point system is not complicated; the more active the trading, the more opportunities to earn points. However, Variational does not simply reward based on trading volume but incorporates a design more focused on transaction quality, including:

· Points directly linked to user trading activity: The platform's rewards page indicates that the point system 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 blatant meaningless volume inflation, arbitrage-style point farming carries the risk of reduction or removal;

· Early users receive additional bonuses: User accounts that had traded before the point system's launch will enjoy a 10% bonus when earning points thereafter;

· Introduction of the Reward Tiers system: The total trading volume in the past 30 days will affect the user's tier, calculated based on the individual's trading volume plus 0.2 times the invited trading volume. Different tiers correspond to different point bonuses, with Iron at 0%, Bronze at 0.5%, Silver at 1%, Gold at 2%, Platinum at 3%, Diamond at 4%, and Infinity at 5%.

Where Bronze requires a Total Volume of $1 million in the last 30 days, Silver is $5 million, Gold is $25 million, Platinum is $100 million, Diamond is $750 million, and Infinity is $2.5 billion;

· Invitations also yield points and USDC rewards: Inviters can receive a 5% USDC reward of the invitee's spread payment, and each time the invitee earns 10 points, the inviter will earn 1 point.

From a regulatory standpoint, Variational's points system leans more towards organic trading rather than pure volume pumping. For users, the focus is not just on completing a single transaction but on considering whether their trading frequency, capital efficiency, position risks, and point costs align.

When Will Variational Conduct TGE?

Currently, Variational has not yet announced a specific TGE date for VAR. However, according to information disclosed in the official documentation, the token distribution is expected to last until the end of Q3 2026 at the latest. Therefore, the community generally expects the TGE to occur between Q3 and Q4 of this year.

Data Source: Variational Official Documentation

Furthermore, the pricing in the prediction market leans more towards Q4. Data from Polymarket shows that the probability of the event "Variational will release its tokens before September 30th this year" is only 26%, while the probability of the event "Variational will release its tokens before December 31st this year" is 78%.