People are sharing all sorts of views on Variational's post-TGE price action Here's my thoughts: Much of it is based on phycology - and I think looking back at HYPE and LIT is important 1. Many Hyperliquid airdrop recipients sold early as they didn't see the vision, and didn't believe a project could be so highly valued that they got for free (still seeing many VAR point holders with max targets of $5B - people struggle to imagine earning 'unrealistically large' amount of money for 'free'). Again, this 'ceiling' is due to many people conflating their personal dollar earnings with objective valuations of where the project can go. I've talked about this before, and really think many will sell to early because of this. This is true for other big airdrops too. 2. Many LIT airdrop recipients sold early, and kept selling, as they thought it was a bad beta to Hyperliquid. Took a while for announcements to materialise and people to build up more belief in the project - reflected in the parabola chart. I'm seeing a lot of people expecting this same pattern with the Variational price action, but I think that won't be the case due to more variables being known (thanks to VAR airdrop recipients looking at the emerging patterns). 3. Variational points holders have had a few of the major concerns cleared up It's established that there are far fewer runners this cycle compared to previously (k-shaped recovery). There are a few narratives between the strongest alts, and VAR meets the criteria (TradFi, options, revenue meta, etc). As we head into the bull market, consensus to run through 2027/28, people are wanting to accumulate these strong alts, and deploy capital, not co much recoup losses from farming etc - much of what we saw with HYPE and LIT etc. Farmers who were unprofitable trying to instantly get back into the green. There will of course be unprofitable farmers again needing to sell. And non-believers, bears, VAR-fudders, etc looking to sell, but with the market taken into account, I think there will be no shortage of buyers. We have recently seen many huge players emerging who are bullish on VAR. @citrini, @punk2498_, and several of the biggest Hyperliquid whales are the most recent I've seen. Variational is positioned to capture the interest of both Crypto and TradFi investors - it's a really strong position to be in. The game-changing partnership the team said they delayed TGE and extended their points for is almost certainly a major TradFi investor - I expect it to take Variational's Swap and Pro products to the next level, and likely draw the interest of other huge TradFi names (who all watch each other closely). I think that the airdrop will easily be the biggest of 2026, and that again is great free marketing. I expect a very strong FDV soon after TGE, and investors to pile in more and more. I've talked for years now about Perp DEXs following Hyperliquid to be valuable if they have; - Useful USPs - A focus on their community (airdrop, coms, etc) - Community aligned tokenomics & rev (buybacks) Variational fits this profile very well. That's why I've been trading on Variational since ~200 users. If you're wanting to go one step further, your takeaway from this should be to use Variational as a case study to identify projects with the same sort of potential, but at an early stage. Look at product, but more importantly at how the team respond to feedback from you (it's much easier to contact teams than you'd think, especially if they are the sort of team you want to be supporting). Read the docs, test the product yourself, ask questions, consider PMF, research team, study roadmaps etc. The difficulty now is weeding out the projects that are trying to farm you, and discovering the community-aligned AND FUNCTION USEFUL & UNIQUE products. I have turned down 99% of partnerships from Perp DEXs & similar projects, but there are still some projects with big potential out there Same as always - be unemotional, be curious, and iterate quickly

Bit of Alpha for you guys: "Everyone should be excited for October... If you want to get that early activity, you have to do so within the Closed Beta before we reach Open Beta" 👀 "There's going to be retroactive rewards, stay tuned for the whole mechanics review" Huge rewards and big news coming for early users at @popdex_ Access & max rebates ↓ app.popdex.xyz/en/referral?r… PopDEX is the only new Perp DEX I've been excited about for a long time The last alpha this good I have shared previously was early 2024 when I posted about Variational when they had 200 users... Got some exciting news to share soon too, stay tuned!

Make sure to register for the @jumperapp waitlist If this does end up being the airdrop, you absolutely don't want to miss it Jumper was one of my first ever 'airdrop farms' but I then ended up using it organically over the years The timing is perfect waitlist.jumper.xyz/r/JMP-BB…