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.

No. 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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

ChainScouter's Variational referral code is OMNIBZWBNK4Y, which gets you access to Omni while sign-up is invite-only. 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.

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.

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.

OLP makes money on the spread between its bid and ask, then hedges the position it took on other exchanges. Variational's protocol keeps 20% of the spread traders pay, and Variational says it plans to use the revenue that reaches its treasury to buy back and burn $VAR. The spread is the price you pay, so compare Omni's quote for your size with the price elsewhere.

Your USDC sits in your own settlement pool contract on Arbitrum rather than with an exchange, and the protocol has audits from Zellic and Spearbit. Against that, OLP is your only counterparty, the private beta comes with "as-is" Terms, and admins can halt trading. The founders, Lucas Schuermann and Edward Yu, ran engineering and quant trading at Genesis Trading, and Variational raised $50M led by Dragonfly in May 2026. Treat it as an exchange run by one trading firm and read the points under Watch for.

Both are leveraged contracts settled in USDC. A perp trades around the clock and uses a funding rate to track its index. A swap is hedged directly with traditional dealers, which Variational says gives tighter spreads, charges daily financing set by traditional rates, passes through dividends, and trades only market hours. Swaps cap at 10x or less and are isolated margin only. Some underlyings, such as gold and the S&P 500, list both, so check which one you are trading.

Every fact on this page links to its source. The facts were checked Oct 12, 2026, and that date moves only when we recheck them. Updating the page does not re-verify a fact.