When I joined Variational at the beginning of the year, I said 100% of our time was going toward bringing tradfi liquidity onchain. Swaps are the biggest step we've taken toward making that real. $XAU and $US100 are live today, and we're already seeing execution costs up to 8x lower than the most liquid tradfi perps onchain. The reason swaps are so interesting is that we don't need to recreate these markets from scratch in crypto. We can source liquidity from the same places traditional markets already trade and bring that execution onchain. That means tighter pricing, much more capacity, and more predictable funding payments. More importantly, it gives us a path to list a much broader set of markets than exists onchain today. The next few weeks should move pretty quickly here, both in new listings and adoption. The end state is still the same thing that got me excited when I joined: one account where you can trade every global market, with institutional liquidity, onchain.

1/ Launching a new site RWApulse to monitor where the best place is to trade RWAs are 👉 rwa.perpetualpulse.xyz

A year and a half ago, we launched Omni to bring broker-style trading on-chain. Back then, we got excited about hitting $1M in daily volume. As we relentlessly iterated on our product with UI redesigns, spread improvements, new order types, and more listings, our user base grew exponentially. Eventually, we started seeing $10M, $100M, $500M, $1B+ days. Now, Omni is one of the largest on-chain trading venues by any metric: $3B+ in daily volume and nearly $2B in open interest. More than half of the platform's activity is in non-crypto markets. That rapid growth is driven primarily by swaps, our new instrument bringing TradFi liquidity on-chain. Omni was (and continues to be) shaped by the feedback of traders. Hyperliquid proved that if you do right by your community, they will do right by you. That's why 32% of $VAR is going to Variational traders at TGE, fully unlocked. No external market makers on Omni, and no points for OLP. 100% of the allocation goes to real users. We have so much left to build: trading API, 24/7 swaps liquidity, spread rebates, OLP deposits, spot markets, and Pro for options. TGE will be just the start of our journey to make Variational the best place for retail and institutions to trade any global market on-chain. I'm excited to share more about our upcoming partnerships. For now I'll just say that the wait will be worth it. See you in Q4.

32 percent @notthreadguy

32% of $VAR will be airdropped to traders, fully unlocked. Following Hyperliquid’s success, we want to do right by our community. That’s why we’ve planned one of the biggest airdrops ever. There’s a lot we haven’t shared yet. time to dream bigger

This will be a fun one! see you guys on the show Please drop any product q’s below, we’ll try to get to the top rated asks

Variational has crossed $3B in daily trading volume for the first time. More than half of this volume is on swap markets.

$2.8B 24h Vol var mode

Omni crossed a new all time high in 24h volume today, driven largely by the rapid adoption of swaps. TradFi markets now account for nearly 70% of our daily volume.

going live now

E185: @variational_io - Zero Fees, More Assets, No Funding Rate @variational_lvs co-founded a hedge fund at 20 that Digital Currency Group acquired a year later, then walked away from that exit to build Variational that now sits second only to Hyperliquid in open interest and daily volume. His argument: crypto rebuilt exchanges before it built brokers, and that architectural gap is what's holding on-chain trading back. 0:00 Intro 2:20 Merch, Travel & Being Back in Singapore 5:13 Who Is Lucas Schuermann? 5:24 How Lucas Thinks About Building Trust 6:03 Starting College at Age 12 8:26 How Do You Actually Skip That Many Grades? 9:45 Making Friends Six Years Younger Than Everyone Else 10:40 Are You Still a "Weirdo" at 30? 11:40 Starting a Hedge Fund at 20 - "Hubris of the Young" 14:09 From Paper-Reading Group to a Real Fund 16:50 Acquired by Digital Currency Group at 21 18:59 Why Sell the Fund to DCG? 19:54 Sponsors: Variational & @Bitwise 20:47 Did You Regret Selling That Early? 21:51 The Money DCG Made Off Their Work 22:38 Starting a Market Making Firm 24:46 Explain Variational Protocol to Your Mom 26:49 Biggest Mistake Building Variational 28:13 The "Holy Sh*t, We Built Something Massive" Moment 29:54 Reason #1: Zero Fees 32:59 How Do You Trust the Price With Only One Market Maker? 34:33 Are Trading Fees a Scam? 35:29 How Much Do Fees Actually Cost Traders? 36:33 Reason #2: Asset Selection & What "Liquidity" Really Means 40:20 Why Hasn't Crypto Solved This Already? 42:39 Where On-Chain Order Books Break at Scale 46:04 Sponsor: @KASTxyz 46:52 Why Wouldn't a Hyperliquid Trader Switch to Variational? 49:28 Who Gets Destroyed When Wall Street Liquidity Arrives On-Chain 51:18 Reason #3: Swaps 52:34 The Real Problem With Perps: Funding Rates 55:18 Roger's BitMEX Story: "Holy Sht, I Can Print More Bitcoin" 58:44 The Hard Lesson: Wiped Out by Funding Fees 1:00:38 Why Perps Are Easy but Options Aren't 1:01:13 What Is a Swap, Really? 1:03:20 How Swaps Beat Perps 1:05:28 Why Raise $50M in May? 1:07:30 Sponsor: @JupiterExchange & @ethena 1:08:14 Does VC Funding Help or Hurt a Project? 1:09:46 Variational vs. Hyperliquid: The Architecture Difference 1:11:44 Why Didn't Hyperliquid Build for Hundreds of Assets First? 1:13:14 Staying Relevant After the Points Program Ends 1:15:11 The "AWS of Liquidity" Analogy, Revisited 1:16:47 What Hyperliquid Gets Wrong About the Future 1:17:48 What Variational Could Get Wrong 1:19:06 Who Wins Long Term: Binance, Coinbase, Hyperliquid, or Variational? 1:21:39 Bitcoin Price Outlook & Crypto Adoption in 2026-27 1:23:59 Variational's Endgame 1:25:51 The One Thing to Remember 1:27:18 Closing Thoughts

Please welcome @JustinCBram, Head of Product at @variational_io. Justin previously served as Co-Founder & CEO of Astaria and Head of Growth at Ondo Finance. 📅 Oct 3, 2026 |📍Grand Hyatt Seoul 🎟 bit.ly/4zk8nvl 🎙️ Apply to speak: bit.ly/4cteDH2 🤝 Become a sponsor: bit.ly/4wboCI5

For the first time, the majority of Variational's 24h trading volume is in traditional markets. Crypto perps will always be an important part of our business, but our focus remains being the go-to venue for trading TradFi markets onchain.

This week, I'm releasing a 1 and a half hour conversation with @variational_lvs - Founder and CEO at @variational_io. Lucas co-founded a hedge fund at 20 that Digital Currency Group acquired a year later, then walked away from that exit to build a firm that now sits second only to Hyperliquid in open interest and daily volume. His argument: crypto rebuilt exchanges before it built brokers, and that architectural gap is what's holding on-chain trading back. We talk about: - Why order books work for a handful of liquid assets like BTC and $ETH but break once you try to list hundreds of markets - How Variational aggregates liquidity straight from traditional finance instead of rebuilding 40 years of market depth from scratch - Why Variational charges zero fees by keeping the market-maker spread inside the platform - The architectural difference between Variational's RFQ, broker-like model and Hyperliquid's order book - How Variational's daily volume went from $1 million to over $100 million within months of launch - What swaps offer that perps can't - a flat, predictable carry cost instead of a funding rate that can spike overnight - Why he raised $50 million in May specifically to get taken seriously by trad-fi institutions - The two kinds of businesses he wants competed into extinction: high-fee brokers and predatory market makers And much more... Podcast out this week!

This week we launched swaps, a new instrument enabled by Variational's broker-like model that taps directly into TradFi liquidity and offers flat funding. To encourage adoption of this new instrument, we are announcing doubled points earned by trading swaps.

Answer: in less than 24h. We're now at $125M OI across three swaps ($XAU, $US100, $US500). Upped limits to $100M per market, for a total of $300M in swaps capacity. More listings coming shortly.

Swaps have been live for less than two days on @variational_io All three swap listings are in the top five markets by volume. ~$125M in open interest between them.

OI limits for $XAU and $US100 swaps have been increased from $20M to $50M. We will continue to raise OI limits further in the coming days!

When I joined Variational at the beginning of the year, I said 100% of our time was going toward bringing tradfi liquidity onchain. Swaps are the biggest step we've taken toward making that real. $XAU and $US100 are live today, and we're already seeing execution costs up to 8x lower than the most liquid tradfi perps onchain. The reason swaps are so interesting is that we don't need to recreate these markets from scratch in crypto. We can source liquidity from the same places traditional markets already trade and bring that execution onchain. That means tighter pricing, much more capacity, and more predictable funding payments. More importantly, it gives us a path to list a much broader set of markets than exists onchain today. The next few weeks should move pretty quickly here, both in new listings and adoption. The end state is still the same thing that got me excited when I joined: one account where you can trade every global market, with institutional liquidity, onchain.

The Lads are BACK with a super-sized episode that's packed with guests and OGs 🫡 @thiccyth0t joins the lineup, along with @QwQiao, and @seyong from FOMO 👀 🚨 OUT NOW on @YouTube & @Spotify! In Ep #102 we cover: 📈 @gametheorizing: "97% Confident We Bottomed" 🏦 @fomo Wants To IPO Instead Of A Token Launch 🕵️ @QwQiao's zcash:native Thesis & The Case For AI Money 💰 What The Lads Are Actually Holding 🍝 Pasta of the Week & More! Full links below! 👇