Variational vs GMX
Variational fills each trade at a quoted price, with a 0% trading fee. GMX is pool-based, with a 0.04%-0.06% position fee. Neither requires KYC. Both bar the United States.
Perpetuals on Arbitrum with no trading fee, where Variational's own market maker quotes every trade. Crypto, stocks, commodities, and indexes share one account.
| Criterion | Variational | GMX |
|---|---|---|
| Fee model | Quote-based | Pool-based |
| Base fee | 0% per trade | 0.04%-0.06% position fee |
| KYC | No KYC | No KYC |
| Restricted countries | United States, Canada, Taiwan, and 13 more | United States |
| Leverage | Up to 50x, 20x on TradFi perps | Up to 100x, capped per market |
| Markets | 550+ markets: crypto, stocks, commodities, indexes | 100+ perpetual markets on Arbitrum, plus swaps |
| Airdrop | Points, no token yet | No airdrop |
| Open interest | $1.02BOne side. DefiLlama, | $59.1MOne side. DefiLlama, |
| 24h volume | $3.69BCoinGecko, | $48.9MArbitrum and Avalanche. CoinGecko, |
| TVL | Not available | $211MTotal value locked in its pools. DefiLlama, |
How Variational and GMX compare
Every fact links to the page it comes from.
| Criterion | Variational | GMX |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | 0.04%-0.06%Position fee. Position changes on most crypto markets The position fee is charged on position size each time you open, close, increase, or partly close: 0.04% when the trade brings long and short open interest closer together and 0.06% when it widens the gap. Gold, silver, oil, and index markets have their own rates, which change with market hours. Price impact, borrowing, funding, and the keeper's network fee are separate, so the position fee on its own understates the cost of a trade. |
| 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 connect a wallet (MetaMask, WalletConnect, Coinbase Wallet, and others) or log in with an email address, a social account, or a passkey, which creates an embedded wallet for you. Neither path includes an identity check. The Terms, last modified August 20, 2026, have no identity-verification clause and say GMX does not collect personal data. Buying crypto with a card inside the app goes through a third-party provider with its own rules, where available. |
| 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. | 1+ countries restricted The Terms, last modified August 20, 2026, require that you are not a U.S. Person and, citing the Commodity Exchange Act, say no U.S. Person may enter into perpetual contracts through the interface. They also exclude residents, nationals, and agents of any country embargoed or similarly sanctioned by the US, the UK, or the EU, without naming those countries, and anyone on a US, UK, EU, or UN sanctions list. You promise not to use a VPN or any other tool to get around the restrictions. |
| 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. | Up to 100x, capped per market The headline cap is 100x. Each market's own cap is derived from its collateral factors, rounded down to a 5x step, and falls as the pool's open interest grows, so thinner markets allow less. Gold, silver, WTI, and Brent allow 100x during market hours and 25x off-hours, QQQ and SPY 50x and 25x, natural gas 40x and 20x, and the SpaceX market 10x. Each position is margined on its own collateral, in a stablecoin or the market's own token, and you can add or withdraw collateral, including a deposit that triggers at a price you set. A position is liquidated when its remaining collateral falls below 0.25% to 1% of size, and the liquidation fee is 0.2% to 0.45% of size. |
| 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. | 100+ perpetual markets on Arbitrum, plus swaps The Oracle API listed 103 perpetual markets on Arbitrum on October 8, 2026: about 95 crypto assets and eight TradFi markets (gold, silver, WTI and Brent crude, natural gas, the QQQ and SPY index ETFs, and a SpaceX stock market), several with more than one pool to choose from. Avalanche had 11 markets and MegaETH 4. TradFi markets trade around the clock with tighter risk limits outside market hours. Spot swaps run through the same pools, with KyberSwap routing when it pays more. Order types: market, limit, stop market, TWAP in 2 to 30 parts, and take-profit and stop-loss, plus conditional margin deposits. Limit and trigger orders execute against the Chainlink oracle price when it reaches your level and do not rest in a book. |
| 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. | Straight from a wallet on Arbitrum, Avalanche, or MegaETH There is no exchange balance to fund for direct trading: connect a wallet on Arbitrum, Avalanche, or MegaETH and trade with the tokens in it. Each pool takes its own collateral tokens, such as USDC, ETH, or BTC, and another supported token, such as USDT on Arbitrum, is swapped into collateral when the order executes. From Ethereum, Base, or BNB Chain you deposit USDC, USDT, or ETH into a GMX Account, a separate trading balance on Arbitrum that Stargate and LayerZero bridge for you. It is not available on Avalanche or MegaETH, and bridging is limited by Stargate's liquidity caps. The app's Receive flow can also buy crypto with a card, Apple Pay, or Google Pay through a third-party provider where available. Classic mode needs ETH or AVAX for gas, while Express mode lets you pay gas in USDC. |
| 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. | None from a wallet, bridged out of a GMX Account When you trade from your wallet there is nothing to withdraw: closing a position returns the collateral and any profit to the wallet, less the position fee, price impact, and the keeper's network fee. A GMX Account balance can be withdrawn as USDC, USDT, or ETH to Arbitrum, Ethereum, Base, or BNB Chain, regardless of which chain you deposited from. The docs do not publish the bridge cost, and transfers depend on Stargate liquidity. If the bridge fee rises before a withdrawal executes, it fails and the funds stay in the GMX Account. |
| 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. | No airdrop GMX has never airdropped its own token. It launched in September 2021 by swapping XVIX and Gambit holders into GMX, and its largest payouts to users since were Arbitrum grants: about 11.9M ARB from November 2023 to March 2024 and 5.4M ARB from June to September 2024, paid weekly as fee rebates and pool rewards. From October 1 to November 1, 2026, GM Labs is counting staked GMX for an airdrop of GT, the points token of GMTrade, GMX's Solana exchange. |
| 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. | 5% off position fees ChainScouter's referral code takes 5% off opening and closing fees, and the referrer earns 5% of those fees. Borrow and funding fees are not discounted. The code is saved when you open the link and applied with your first order. Without a code, GMX assigns an automatic 5% discount at $50M of lifetime volume on Arbitrum and 10% at $250M. A code stops paying its referrer after 12 months or $20,000 in rewards, but your discount carries on. |
| 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, installable on phones The official interface is the web app at app.gmx.io, built as a progressive web app you can add to a phone's home screen. The docs list no native iOS or Android app. There are three trading modes. In Classic, your wallet signs every transaction. In Express, you sign messages and GMX's own relay submits them. Express with One-Click Trading adds a sub-account key, stored in your browser, that signs for you up to a limit you set. Developers get a public API, a TypeScript SDK, and published skills for AI agents. |
Rates apply to the accounts and markets in each scope, before discounts. Funding, execution, and transfer costs are separate. A country missing from a restriction list is not confirmed eligible.
Questions about Variational and GMX
Is Variational or GMX cheaper?
They charge in different ways, so the headline rates do not line up. 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.
GMX: The position fee is 0.04% to 0.06%. The position fee is charged on position size each time you open, close, increase, or partly close: 0.04% when the trade brings long and short open interest closer together and 0.06% when it widens the gap. Gold, silver, oil, and index markets have their own rates, which change with market hours. Price impact, borrowing, funding, and the keeper's network fee are separate, so the position fee on its own understates the cost of a trade.
Do Variational and GMX 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.
GMX: You connect a wallet (MetaMask, WalletConnect, Coinbase Wallet, and others) or log in with an email address, a social account, or a passkey, which creates an embedded wallet for you. Neither path includes an identity check. The Terms, last modified August 20, 2026, have no identity-verification clause and say GMX does not collect personal data. Buying crypto with a card inside the app goes through a third-party provider with its own rules, where available.
Can I use Variational or GMX in the US?
No. Both name the US as restricted.
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.
GMX: The Terms, last modified August 20, 2026, require that you are not a U.S. Person and, citing the Commodity Exchange Act, say no U.S. Person may enter into perpetual contracts through the interface. They also exclude residents, nationals, and agents of any country embargoed or similarly sanctioned by the US, the UK, or the EU, without naming those countries, and anyone on a US, UK, EU, or UN sanctions list. You promise not to use a VPN or any other tool to get around the restrictions.
What leverage do Variational and GMX 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.
GMX: The headline cap is 100x. Each market's own cap is derived from its collateral factors, rounded down to a 5x step, and falls as the pool's open interest grows, so thinner markets allow less. Gold, silver, WTI, and Brent allow 100x during market hours and 25x off-hours, QQQ and SPY 50x and 25x, natural gas 40x and 20x, and the SpaceX market 10x. Each position is margined on its own collateral, in a stablecoin or the market's own token, and you can add or withdraw collateral, including a deposit that triggers at a price you set. A position is liquidated when its remaining collateral falls below 0.25% to 1% of size, and the liquidation fee is 0.2% to 0.45% of size.
What can I trade on Variational and GMX?
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.
GMX: The Oracle API listed 103 perpetual markets on Arbitrum on October 8, 2026: about 95 crypto assets and eight TradFi markets (gold, silver, WTI and Brent crude, natural gas, the QQQ and SPY index ETFs, and a SpaceX stock market), several with more than one pool to choose from. Avalanche had 11 markets and MegaETH 4. TradFi markets trade around the clock with tighter risk limits outside market hours. Spot swaps run through the same pools, with KyberSwap routing when it pays more. Order types: market, limit, stop market, TWAP in 2 to 30 parts, and take-profit and stop-loss, plus conditional margin deposits. Limit and trigger orders execute against the Chainlink oracle price when it reaches your level and do not rest in a book.
Do Variational and GMX 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.
GMX: GMX has never airdropped its own token. It launched in September 2021 by swapping XVIX and Gambit holders into GMX, and its largest payouts to users since were Arbitrum grants: about 11.9M ARB from November 2023 to March 2024 and 5.4M ARB from June to September 2024, paid weekly as fee rebates and pool rewards. From October 1 to November 1, 2026, GM Labs is counting staked GMX for an airdrop of GT, the points token of GMTrade, GMX's Solana exchange.
Compare other pairs
Highlighted pairs are reviewed. The others show facts without a recommendation.