Variational vs Axiom
Variational fills each trade at a quoted price, with a 0% trading fee on perps. Axiom charges 1% per spot trade. Neither requires KYC.
Perpetuals on Arbitrum with no trading fee, where Variational's own market maker quotes every trade. Crypto, stocks, commodities, and indexes share one account.
Browser trading terminal for new tokens: one-click buys and limit orders on Solana and seven other chains, wallet and X tracking, and a perps tab on Hyperliquid.
| Criterion | Variational | Axiom |
|---|---|---|
| Fee model | Quote-based | Per transaction |
| Base fee | 0% per trade on perps | 1% per spot trade |
| KYC | No KYC | No KYC |
| Restricted countries | United States, Canada, Taiwan, and 13 more | Sanctions rules only |
| Leverage | Up to 50x, 20x on TradFi perps | Hyperliquid's caps, up to 40x |
| Markets | 550+ markets: crypto, stocks, commodities, indexes | Tokens on Solana and seven other chains, perps on Hyperliquid |
| Airdrop | Points, no token yet | Points, no token yet |
How Variational and Axiom compare
Every fact links to the page it comes from.
| Criterion | Variational | Axiom |
|---|---|---|
| Fees | 0%Trading fee. Omni perps and swaps, every market Omni, Variational's trading app, charges no maker or taker fee on any market or trade size. Every trade fills at a price quoted by OLP, Variational's own market maker, so the cost of a trade is the spread in that quote, which the order form shows for your size. Deposits and withdrawals cost a flat 0.1 USDC each, and a liquidation closes the position 0.5% past the quote. | 1%Trading fee. Spot trades on every chain, perps listed separately Every spot trade pays 1% to Axiom, on every supported chain, before cashback: the SOL rebate runs from 0.05% of trade value at the entry tier to 0.25% at the top, so the net fee is 0.95% to 0.75%, and a referral signup takes a further 10% off. Solana priority fees and bribes, or gas on the other chains, come on top. Perps on Hyperliquid pay 0.01% per transaction plus Hyperliquid's fee and funding. The Terms let fees change without notice and treat the quoted cost as an estimate. Docs: Axiom fees (cashback tiers)Docs: referral program (1% base fee, 10% discount)Docs: Solana fees (priority fee, bribe, MEV modes)Docs: perpetuals deposit (0.01% perps fee)Docs: staking (validator and axiSOL fees)Terms of Use: FeesDefiLlama fee adapter: the 1% taken at swap time on BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain |
| KYC | No KYC You connect an EVM wallet (Rabby, MetaMask, or anything on WalletConnect), enter an access code while Omni is in private beta, accept the Terms, and sign in with a gasless signature. No identity check is asked for to trade, deposit, or withdraw. KYC applies only to some payouts: referral rewards of $4,000 or more from the on-chain trader campaign, and trading competition prizes. The app checks your location by IP and shows a restricted-region notice to visitors from restricted countries. | No KYC You sign up with an email code, a Google account, or a Phantom wallet, set a password, and are shown a recovery phrase. No identity document is asked for, and the wallet keys are yours to export. Buying SOL by debit card or Apple Pay through Coinbase inside the app needs no KYC up to $500 a week, according to Axiom's FAQ, while the MoonPay route verifies identity under MoonPay's rules. The Terms, dated February 26, 2026, reserve the right to run KYC and anti-money-laundering checks at Axiom's discretion, naming passports, driving licences, and utility bills as examples, and the Privacy Policy says wallet addresses are screened for illicit activity. Docs: signup (email, Google, or Phantom, and a recovery phrase)Docs: buy crypto (up to $500 without KYC)Docs: FAQs (Coinbase purchases, Turnkey wallet)Terms of Use: Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering ChecksPrivacy Policy, section 1.1: wallet screeningMoonPay help center: how to verify your MoonPay account |
| Country restrictions | 16+ countries restricted The Restricted Persons policy, last updated April 20, 2026, bars the US and its territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Minor Outlying Islands), Canada, Taiwan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Sevastopol regions of Ukraine. It also bars US and Canadian persons wherever they live, and the Terms, last updated September 11, 2026, extend the ban to citizens of a restricted country as well as residents. The app applies the list by IP address, and the Terms forbid using a VPN to disguise your location. | Sanctions rules only The Terms, dated February 26, 2026, name no country. They bar anyone on a US, EU, or UK sanctions list, anyone located in, resident in, or organized in a jurisdiction under comprehensive sanctions or designated as terrorist-supporting by the UN, EU, UK, or US, and anyone under 18, and they let Axiom restrict any person or region at its discretion. Using a VPN to get around a restriction is a breach. The previous Terms, dated February 26, 2025, named the United States, the "Republic of China", Singapore, and sixteen other countries and regions. The current version carries no such list. |
| Leverage | Up to 50x, 20x on TradFi perps Every crypto perpetual allows up to 50x. Perpetuals on stocks, ETFs, commodities, indexes, and pre-IPO companies cap at 20x, and swaps at 10x, with cocoa at 5x. The markets page shows each market's cap. Maintenance margin is half the initial margin at the leverage you pick, so lowering leverage on an open position can move its liquidation price closer. Positions are cross-margined unless you switch a market to isolated, and swaps are isolated only until they trade around the clock. | Hyperliquid's caps, up to 40x Perps run on Hyperliquid, so each market's maximum leverage is Hyperliquid's: a whole number up to a per-asset cap that tops out at 40x on BTC and steps down on large positions, under Hyperliquid's margin rules and hourly funding. Axiom's own perps page, last updated in April 2025, still says up to 50x, but the venue's current cap governs. Open positions show entry, mark, and liquidation prices and take-profit and stop-loss levels in Axiom's perps portfolio. |
| Markets | 550+ markets: crypto, stocks, commodities, indexes Omni's public API listed 568 markets on October 12, 2026: 434 crypto perpetuals, 120 perpetuals on stocks, ETFs, commodities, indexes, and the pre-IPO names Anthropic and OpenAI, and 14 swaps. Swaps track gold, silver, oil, gasoline, copper, cocoa, US and Asian equity indexes, the VIX, and the dollar index, with financing tied to traditional rates, and they trade market hours and close on weekends. Perps trade around the clock. There is no order book: market orders fill at the quote, limit orders fill in full once the quote crosses your price, and trigger orders fire on the mark price. Take-profit and stop-loss orders fire on the mark or the quoted price, your choice. Limit orders do not fill partially yet, and open orders expire after 120 days. | Tokens on Solana and seven other chains, perps on Hyperliquid Spot trading covers tokens on Solana, where the terminal started, with pump.fun launches, tokens nearing migration, and fresh Raydium pairs surfaced in Pulse, plus the other chains the app lists: BNB Chain (added October 23, 2025), Ethereum, Base, Robinhood Chain, Ink, Arc, and HyperEVM, as shown in the app's chain selector on October 8, 2026. Spot order types are market orders, limit orders, buy-on-migration and sell-on-migration snipes, and auto-strategies that place a buy and its limit orders in one click. The Perpetuals tab opens long or short positions on Hyperliquid's markets. |
| Depositing | USDC on Arbitrum only Collateral is USDC on Arbitrum One, deposited from the wallet you signed up with. The docs name no other route: funds on another chain have to be bridged to Arbitrum first, or withdrawn there from an exchange. Deposits are gasless, so you need no ETH, and each one costs a flat 0.1 USDC. Your USDC sits in an on-chain settlement pool between you and OLP, kept separate from every other trader's pool. | SOL to your wallet, or a card via Coinbase or MoonPay The Axiom wallet is created at signup, so funding it means sending SOL, or tokens on another supported chain, to the address the app shows. Inside the app, Buy opens Coinbase's checkout for a debit card or Apple Pay purchase of SOL, which Axiom's FAQ says needs no KYC up to $500 a week. Coinbase's own developer docs say its hosted guest checkout was discontinued on June 30, 2026, and Axiom's FAQ still shows the $500 figure. MoonPay has been a second route since October 2025, taking cards, bank transfers, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and Venmo under MoonPay's identity checks. Perps collateral is separate: you convert SOL into USDC on Hyperliquid from the wallet menu, which takes about five minutes. Docs: signup (deposit SOL or buy through Coinbase)Docs: buy cryptoAxiom homepage FAQ: buying up to $500 a week without KYCCoinbase developer docs: hosted guest checkout discontinued June 30, 2026MoonPay newsroom: MoonPay is now live on AxiomDocs: perpetuals deposit (convert SOL to USDC on Hyperliquid) |
| Withdrawing | USDC on Arbitrum, to your own wallet Withdrawals send USDC on Arbitrum back to the wallet connected to your account, the only destination allowed. They are gasless and cost a flat 0.1 USDC. With positions open, you can withdraw only the balance above your margin requirement. | Send from your own wallet, no Axiom fee published There is no withdrawal step. The Axiom wallet is yours, so leaving means sending SOL or tokens to any address and paying the network fee, or importing the recovery phrase into Phantom, Solflare, or Rabby, which Axiom's own signup guide recommends so you always have direct access. Axiom publishes no withdrawal fee of its own. Perps collateral comes back by converting USDC on Hyperliquid to USDC on Solana from the wallet menu, in about five minutes. The axiSOL staking pool charges 0.1% on withdrawals, and yield balances at Marginfi are advertised as instantly withdrawable. |
| Airdrop | Points, no token yet Variational has no token yet. It says $VAR launches in Q4 2026 with 32% of supply airdropped to points holders in proportion to their points, all of it unlocked at launch. Points are earned by trading on Omni and go out weekly until the launch. No date, token price, or points-to-token rate has been published. An account needs at least 1 point and must sign the $VAR terms to receive tokens, and the Terms let Variational change or withhold points at its discretion. Variational says it will use all revenue sent to its treasury to buy back and burn $VAR. | Points, no token yet Axiom has no platform token and has never run an airdrop. axiSOL, its liquid staking token, is not a reward. Trading, referrals, and quests earn Axiom points, which the docs say unlock extra benefits and potential future rewards without naming a token, after a 2025 edit removed a line about possible airdrops. A token sold under Axiom's name on a launchpad or another chain is not Axiom's unless Axiom announces it. |
| Referral program | Access code to sign up During the private beta, an existing trader's referral code is the access code a new account needs. A referral link carries the code in the address, and the app picks it up for the access-code step after you connect a wallet. The referrer earns 5% of the spread their referrals pay, in USDC, and 1 point for every 10 points their referrals earn. Traders unlock a first referral code at $1M in volume and one more slot for each $1M after that, and the app rejects invalid or expired codes. A campaign running since August 12, 2026 also gives points to 10,000 listed on-chain trader addresses that sign up with a code and reach volume milestones. | 10% off trading fees Signing up through another user's link takes 10% off trading fees on every trade. The referrer earns 30% of Axiom's net fee on trades by the people they referred directly, 3% on the next level, and 2% on the level after that, on Solana, BNB Chain, and Ethereum trading, with some tokens excluded. Trading itself earns SOL cashback by tier and points toward a leaderboard. The Terms let Axiom change, pause, or withhold rewards before they are claimed. |
| Platform | Web app, installs on phones Omni runs in the browser at omni.variational.io and is built for mobile browsers too. Variational publishes no native app and says none is needed: on a phone you can add Omni to the home screen as a web app, then link it to a signed-in desktop session with a QR code instead of connecting a wallet on the phone. A read-only API serves market data, and the trading API is not available yet. | Web app that installs on phones Axiom is a browser terminal at axiom.trade built for a desktop screen: a chart with the order box beside it, one-click and hotkey buys and sells, limit orders you can drag on the chart, the Pulse feed of new launches and migrations, a wallet tracker, an X account monitor, several wallets under one login, and a Perpetuals tab. You sign in with an email code, Google, or Phantom plus a password. The site ships a web manifest, so on a phone it installs to the home screen as an app. No native iOS or Android app is documented, and Axiom's site links to no app store listing. Support runs through a Discord ticket channel and the X account. |
Rates apply to the accounts and markets in each scope, before discounts. Network, funding, execution, and transfer costs are separate. A country missing from a restriction list is not confirmed eligible.
Questions about Variational and Axiom
Is Variational or Axiom cheaper?
Axiom's headline rate is for spot trades and Variational's for perps, so they do not line up. Network, funding, execution, and transfer costs are separate.
Variational: The trading fee is 0%, and each trade fills at a quoted price that includes a spread. Omni, Variational's trading app, charges no maker or taker fee on any market or trade size. Every trade fills at a price quoted by OLP, Variational's own market maker, so the cost of a trade is the spread in that quote, which the order form shows for your size. Deposits and withdrawals cost a flat 0.1 USDC each, and a liquidation closes the position 0.5% past the quote.
Axiom: The standard trading fee is 1% per trade. Every spot trade pays 1% to Axiom, on every supported chain, before cashback: the SOL rebate runs from 0.05% of trade value at the entry tier to 0.25% at the top, so the net fee is 0.95% to 0.75%, and a referral signup takes a further 10% off. Solana priority fees and bribes, or gas on the other chains, come on top. Perps on Hyperliquid pay 0.01% per transaction plus Hyperliquid's fee and funding. The Terms let fees change without notice and treat the quoted cost as an estimate.
Do Variational and Axiom require KYC?
Neither requires KYC.
Variational: You connect an EVM wallet (Rabby, MetaMask, or anything on WalletConnect), enter an access code while Omni is in private beta, accept the Terms, and sign in with a gasless signature. No identity check is asked for to trade, deposit, or withdraw. KYC applies only to some payouts: referral rewards of $4,000 or more from the on-chain trader campaign, and trading competition prizes. The app checks your location by IP and shows a restricted-region notice to visitors from restricted countries.
Axiom: You sign up with an email code, a Google account, or a Phantom wallet, set a password, and are shown a recovery phrase. No identity document is asked for, and the wallet keys are yours to export. Buying SOL by debit card or Apple Pay through Coinbase inside the app needs no KYC up to $500 a week, according to Axiom's FAQ, while the MoonPay route verifies identity under MoonPay's rules. The Terms, dated February 26, 2026, reserve the right to run KYC and anti-money-laundering checks at Axiom's discretion, naming passports, driving licences, and utility bills as examples, and the Privacy Policy says wallet addresses are screened for illicit activity.
Can I use Variational or Axiom in the US?
Variational names the US as restricted. Axiom does not name the US, which is not the same as confirmed eligibility.
Variational: The Restricted Persons policy, last updated April 20, 2026, bars the US and its territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Minor Outlying Islands), Canada, Taiwan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Sevastopol regions of Ukraine. It also bars US and Canadian persons wherever they live, and the Terms, last updated September 11, 2026, extend the ban to citizens of a restricted country as well as residents. The app applies the list by IP address, and the Terms forbid using a VPN to disguise your location.
Axiom: The Terms, dated February 26, 2026, name no country. They bar anyone on a US, EU, or UK sanctions list, anyone located in, resident in, or organized in a jurisdiction under comprehensive sanctions or designated as terrorist-supporting by the UN, EU, UK, or US, and anyone under 18, and they let Axiom restrict any person or region at its discretion. Using a VPN to get around a restriction is a breach. The previous Terms, dated February 26, 2025, named the United States, the "Republic of China", Singapore, and sixteen other countries and regions. The current version carries no such list.
What leverage do Variational and Axiom offer?
Variational: Every crypto perpetual allows up to 50x. Perpetuals on stocks, ETFs, commodities, indexes, and pre-IPO companies cap at 20x, and swaps at 10x, with cocoa at 5x. The markets page shows each market's cap. Maintenance margin is half the initial margin at the leverage you pick, so lowering leverage on an open position can move its liquidation price closer. Positions are cross-margined unless you switch a market to isolated, and swaps are isolated only until they trade around the clock.
Axiom: Perps run on Hyperliquid, so each market's maximum leverage is Hyperliquid's: a whole number up to a per-asset cap that tops out at 40x on BTC and steps down on large positions, under Hyperliquid's margin rules and hourly funding. Axiom's own perps page, last updated in April 2025, still says up to 50x, but the venue's current cap governs. Open positions show entry, mark, and liquidation prices and take-profit and stop-loss levels in Axiom's perps portfolio.
What can I trade on Variational and Axiom?
Variational: Omni's public API listed 568 markets on October 12, 2026: 434 crypto perpetuals, 120 perpetuals on stocks, ETFs, commodities, indexes, and the pre-IPO names Anthropic and OpenAI, and 14 swaps. Swaps track gold, silver, oil, gasoline, copper, cocoa, US and Asian equity indexes, the VIX, and the dollar index, with financing tied to traditional rates, and they trade market hours and close on weekends. Perps trade around the clock. There is no order book: market orders fill at the quote, limit orders fill in full once the quote crosses your price, and trigger orders fire on the mark price. Take-profit and stop-loss orders fire on the mark or the quoted price, your choice. Limit orders do not fill partially yet, and open orders expire after 120 days.
Axiom: Spot trading covers tokens on Solana, where the terminal started, with pump.fun launches, tokens nearing migration, and fresh Raydium pairs surfaced in Pulse, plus the other chains the app lists: BNB Chain (added October 23, 2025), Ethereum, Base, Robinhood Chain, Ink, Arc, and HyperEVM, as shown in the app's chain selector on October 8, 2026. Spot order types are market orders, limit orders, buy-on-migration and sell-on-migration snipes, and auto-strategies that place a buy and its limit orders in one click. The Perpetuals tab opens long or short positions on Hyperliquid's markets.
Do Variational and Axiom have airdrops?
Variational: Variational has no token yet. It says $VAR launches in Q4 2026 with 32% of supply airdropped to points holders in proportion to their points, all of it unlocked at launch. Points are earned by trading on Omni and go out weekly until the launch. No date, token price, or points-to-token rate has been published. An account needs at least 1 point and must sign the $VAR terms to receive tokens, and the Terms let Variational change or withhold points at its discretion. Variational says it will use all revenue sent to its treasury to buy back and burn $VAR.
Axiom: Axiom has no platform token and has never run an airdrop. axiSOL, its liquid staking token, is not a reward. Trading, referrals, and quests earn Axiom points, which the docs say unlock extra benefits and potential future rewards without naming a token, after a 2025 edit removed a line about possible airdrops. A token sold under Axiom's name on a launchpad or another chain is not Axiom's unless Axiom announces it.
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