MBBCrypto.var

Day 4 of Getting Funded on @ProprXYZ with @get_truenorth: W/R: 0 wins/1 trade TRADES: - AMD short - SOXL long (FILLED) PENDING: - CRWV long The SOXL Long did not play out as expected, hit my stop loss for a small loss. AMD short is currently in profit; hopefully we walk away from this AMD short with a win. It also recommended me a CRWV long. We'll see how this one plays out. Interestingly enough, it's also an inverse play of the AMD short. I wonder what TN is cooking here...

Day 3 of Getting Funded on @ProprXYZ with @get_truenorth: TRADES: - AMD short PENDING: - SOXL long TrueNorth gave me another recommendation on top of AMD that I can trade. Interesting because this is directionally the opposite trade that I'm taking on AMD since I'm short. I've done a deeper dive into how it makes recommendations and it seems like it relies on relative strength to screen assets worth trading... Wonder if that part can be customized! AMD short currently at a small loss, but nowhere near stoploss. Got halfway to TP but it's now back at basically breakeven. Will keep everyone updated!

Day 2 of Getting Funded on @ProprXYZ with @get_truenorth: TRADE: AMD short Based on my experience with TrueNorth's previous models, I've decided to trade on higher timeframes (4h, 1d) since it performs better. Interesting to see that TrueNorth is bearish on AMD short-term. Feel free to trade along with me (or more like my TN agent lol). Should be easy to copy the trades since I'm in a higher timeframe. As you can see, risking $50 per trade which gives me three losses in a row as wiggle room. Let's see how this plays out!

Day 1 of Getting Funded on @ProprXYZ with @get_truenorth: we’re back on the @ProprXYZ x @get_truenorth grind! first, thanks to @SipaCapital for the free one-month trial of TrueNorth. I’ll be spending this month showing what the tool can do. starting today, I’m running a $5k challenge to push its limits. last time, we showed that even an unprofitable trader like myself could make it work. no point in testing it twice. this time, in spirit of increasing RWA interest in web3, I will only trade equities. let’s see how it handles the challenge. Let's also see how Propr likes equity traders!

Feels like my posts are getting a little too long, gonna make them more concise from here on out. Started trading using @get_truenorth again now that I've moved away from Variational until TGE... liking how much it has evolved in the past 4-5 months that I've been using it. More on it soon.

Beyond @variational_io: @arcus_xyz 3/3 - Can It Actually Win? Hey everyone! Welcome to the final part of my three-part Arcus research series. In Part 1, we explored Arcus's origins, its relationship with Robinhood, and the opportunity to bring traditional financial markets on-chain. In Part 2, we looked at its technology, particularly RFQ execution, multi-asset collateral, and pTokens. Today, I want to answer the most important question: Can Arcus actually build a sustainable business in an increasingly competitive perp DEX market? And more importantly, what makes it worth paying attention to when Hyperliquid and Variational already exist? Let's look at the numbers. 1. Arcus is growing. Quite rapidly, actually. According to DefiLlama, as of November 2: - $10.89B in 30-day perp trading volume - $118M in open interest - $63.8M in TVL - $1.96M in 30-day trading fees For an exchange that launched just a few months ago, those aren't insignificant numbers. But what caught my attention was the growth. Arcus's TVL increased from approximately $28.4M at the end of September to $63.7M at the end of October. That's more than 120% growth in a single month. Its monthly protocol revenue also increased from approximately $594K in September to $1.85M in October. A little over 3x. Clearly, something is working. But as always, I think it's important to look beyond headline numbers. 2. Trading volume isn't everything. Here's one metric I like looking at when evaluating perp DEXes: open interest relative to trading volume. Arcus processed approximately $10.9B in perp trading volume over the past 30 days, while current open interest sits around $118M. That means monthly trading volume is roughly 92 times current open interest. Is that necessarily bad? Not at all. High-frequency traders and market makers can generate tremendous volume while holding relatively little open interest. But it raises an important question: How much of this activity represents sustained demand, and how much is short-term trading encouraged by incentives? I think that's particularly relevant because Arcus launched its points program in October. We've seen repeatedly throughout DeFi that incentive programs can generate enormous amounts of activity. The real test is what happens when those incentives disappear. I'll be watching whether Arcus can continue growing its open interest, retained capital, and trading activity independently of rewards. 3. The business is generating real fees. This is one thing I think Arcus deserves credit for. Its perp exchange generated approximately $1.96M in fees over the last 30 days, of which $1.73M was retained as protocol revenue after maker rebates and referral payouts. That's roughly 88% revenue retention on reported trading fees. Now, this isn't the same thing as profit. We still need to account for engineering, infrastructure, staffing, legal expenses, and other operating costs. And if a significant portion of trading activity is motivated by future token rewards, there's an additional economic cost that isn't necessarily reflected in these revenue figures. But the fact that Arcus is collecting meaningful trading fees is encouraging. What I'd like to understand next is whether that revenue can remain sustainable when competing venues offer aggressive incentives or cheaper execution. 4. Here's something that surprised me: pTokens aren't taking off yet. In Part 2, I spent quite a bit of time discussing pTokens. I genuinely think the idea is interesting. Turning leveraged perpetual positions into transferable ERC-20 tokens could open the door to new financial products and DeFi integrations. But the actual adoption numbers are much less impressive. As of early November, Arcus pTokens have only around $380K in TVL. That's down roughly 60% over the past month. For context, Arcus's broader perpetual exchange has approximately $64M in TVL. Now, I wouldn't write off a relatively new product based on a few months of activity. But there's an important lesson here. A product can be technologically innovative without having demonstrated product-market fit. The concept of tokenized leveraged exposure is compelling. But will traders actually prefer pTokens over manually trading perps? Will there be enough secondary-market liquidity for users to enter and exit positions efficiently? Until those questions have convincing answers, I would view pTokens as an interesting option on future growth rather than an established competitive advantage. 5. Robinhood: Arcus's biggest potential advantage? This is where my original thesis from Part 1 comes back. I think Arcus's most compelling opportunity might not be its trading engine or even its pTokens. It might be distribution. In October, Robinhood Wallet integrated Arcus as one of its execution providers for tokenized stock swaps. That means eligible users can access Arcus's liquidity and execution infrastructure directly through Robinhood Wallet. Why is this important? One of the biggest challenges facing emerging perp DEXes is acquiring users. Even with excellent technology, a new exchange needs traders, market makers, liquidity, and an ecosystem. And acquiring all of those things is expensive. Arcus potentially has an alternative path. Instead of relying entirely on traders discovering its exchange, it can provide trading infrastructure through applications that already have users. Think about the opportunity if tokenized financial assets eventually become a standard feature across crypto wallets and financial applications. Users might interact with Arcus's infrastructure without even realizing they're using Arcus. That's a much more interesting business model than simply competing for the same crypto-native traders. However, there's an important caveat. Robinhood Wallet's integration is neither exclusive nor evidence that the broader Robinhood brokerage customer base is trading on Arcus. And Arcus remains unavailable to users in the United States and several other major jurisdictions. So distribution is a potential advantage, not yet a proven moat. 6. Arcus vs. Hyperliquid vs. Variational After studying Arcus, I think each platform has a somewhat different strategic emphasis. Hyperliquid: Liquidity and ecosystem network effects. Hyperliquid has established substantial liquidity and trading activity, while expanding into an ecosystem where developers can deploy markets and build financial applications. Its strongest advantage is the liquidity and distribution it has already accumulated. Variational: Flexible derivatives and integrated market making. Variational's RFQ architecture allows it to support a wide range of instruments through integrated market-making infrastructure. Its strength is the flexibility of its derivatives offering and its ability to expand into markets that may be difficult to serve with conventional order books. Arcus: Tokenized financial assets and embedded distribution. Arcus combines spot stock-token trading, perpetuals, and composable derivatives with its relationship with Robinhood. I think Arcus is particularly interesting as a potential infrastructure provider for applications bringing traditional financial assets on-chain. Of course, these strategies overlap. And all three are ultimately competing for the same scarce resources: users, liquidity, and trading activity. 8. The bull case and the bear case My bull case: Arcus becomes an important piece of infrastructure for on-chain traditional finance. Tokenized equities and RWA derivatives gain adoption, Robinhood Wallet and other integrations create recurring order flow, and Arcus expands beyond being a standalone trading venue. Its experienced team and increasingly sophisticated financial products help it capture a meaningful share of that activity. My bear case: Arcus struggles to establish a lasting competitive advantage in a market where Hyperliquid and Variational already offer deep liquidity and expanding RWA coverage. Its pTokens fail to find meaningful adoption. Its Robinhood relationship generates less incremental trading activity than expected. And much of its initial growth proves to be incentive-driven rather than organic. There are also meaningful risks associated with its validator trust model, leveraged products, and the evolving regulatory environment for tokenized securities. I don't think these concerns should be overlooked. 9. My final verdict After researching Arcus, I'm more interested in the project than I initially expected. I'm interested because Arcus is approaching the perp DEX opportunity from the perspective of financial product distribution. I've mentioned throughout this series that my biggest bull case for on-chain derivatives is participation from non-crypto-native users. I think the industry is still very early in bringing traditional financial products onto blockchain infrastructure. That's where Arcus could have an interesting opportunity. But ultimately, I think it still has a lot to prove. My current view: Bullish on the market opportunity. Cautiously optimistic about Arcus's positioning. Still waiting for stronger evidence of sustainable product-market fit. That concludes my three-part Arcus research series! As always, the goal isn't to convince anyone to use or invest in a particular protocol. It's to understand the business, challenge assumptions, and identify what actually matters. Thanks to everyone who's followed along. More perp DEX research coming soon.

Beyond @variational_io: @arcus_xyz 2/3 - Making Perpetual Futures Composable Hey everyone! Welcome back to Part 2 of my Arcus research series. In Part 1, we explored Arcus's origins, its relationship with Robinhood, and why I think bringing traditional financial assets on-chain could be one of the biggest opportunities for perp DEXes. Today, I want to get into the technology. And after digging deeper, I think I've found something considerably more interesting than just 24/7 stock trading. Arcus is trying to transform perpetual futures from standalone trading positions into financial products that can be used throughout DeFi. Let's break it down. 1. Two different approaches to execution One thing I found interesting is that Arcus uses two different execution models depending on the product. For spot trading, Arcus uses an RFQ model. When someone wants to swap tokenized stocks, professional market makers compete to offer quotes. Sound familiar? It's conceptually similar to the RFQ approach we've discussed extensively with Variational. Instead of relying exclusively on passive liquidity sitting in an order book, the system requests prices from liquidity providers. But there's an important difference. Arcus uses RFQs for spot swaps, while Variational's RFQ architecture underpins its derivatives trading. For perpetuals, Arcus instead uses an order-book model with off-chain matching and blockchain-based custody and state commitments. That distinction matters because these are two very different approaches to building a trading venue. The RFQ model can be particularly useful for facilitating trades across a large number of tokenized assets without requiring deep, continuously maintained public order books for every spot pair. Meanwhile, the order-book model provides familiar market structure for active derivatives traders. I wouldn't necessarily call either approach superior. Execution quality ultimately depends on liquidity, spreads, market conditions, and the ability to manage risk. 2. 24/7 stock perps: solving a traditional market limitation One of Arcus's central products is perpetual futures on traditional financial assets. Think NVIDIA, Tesla, the S&P 500, or gold. Unlike conventional equity markets, these instruments can trade around the clock. I think this is an important opportunity. Imagine NVIDIA announces something significant after the market closes, or geopolitical news breaks over the weekend. Traditionally, many investors have limited options to express their views immediately. On Arcus, eligible traders can take positions through perpetual futures even when the underlying stock market is closed. But here's the catch. How do you price a stock perpetual when the underlying stock isn't trading? During regular market hours, reference prices can be anchored to traditional financial-market data. Outside those hours, however, price discovery becomes more dependent on the derivatives market itself. This creates an interesting trade-off. Continuous trading provides flexibility, but it also introduces the potential for thinner liquidity, price deviations, and larger gaps when the traditional market reopens. In other words, 24/7 trading isn't automatically better pricing. It's a new market structure with its own risks. 3. pTokens: the innovation I find most interesting Now here's where things get exciting. Arcus introduced something called pTokens. Essentially, pTokens convert managed perpetual futures positions into transferable ERC-20 tokens. Think of them as on-chain, leveraged ETF-style products. For example, consider pHOOD3x. Instead of manually opening and managing a leveraged position on Robinhood stock, a user can purchase a token representing exposure to a managed 3x long HOOD perpetual strategy. Let's use a simplified example. Suppose you invest $1,000 in pHOOD3x. At its target leverage, the underlying strategy maintains approximately $3,000 of long exposure to HOOD. If HOOD rises 10%, your position might gain approximately 30% before trading costs, funding, rebalancing effects, and other expenses. Of course, the opposite is also true. And because leverage is actively managed, longer-term performance can diverge significantly from simply multiplying the stock's total return by three. But the important innovation isn't the leverage itself. Leveraged financial products have existed for decades. The innovation is making that exposure transferable as a blockchain token. 4. Why tokenizing perp positions matters Normally, when you open a perpetual position, that exposure remains tied to your trading account. You can close it, reduce it, or hedge it, but you generally can't simply transfer the position as an ordinary ERC-20 token to another DeFi protocol. pTokens change that. Imagine holding $10,000 worth of a leveraged BTC pToken. In principle, you could: - Transfer your leveraged exposure to another wallet. - Trade the token through a compatible spot exchange. - Potentially use it as collateral in a lending protocol that supports it. - Integrate the token into more complex DeFi strategies. That last point is particularly interesting. Arcus is trying to make derivatives exposure composable. Rather than treating a perpetual position as something that exists only within one exchange, it becomes an asset other financial applications can interact with. Of course, actually achieving this requires integrations, liquidity, and appropriate risk management. Simply being an ERC-20 token doesn't automatically guarantee utility. But conceptually, I think this is a much more interesting innovation than adding another perpetual trading pair. Another easily overlooked benefit is how it appeals to the risk-appetite of modern day Robinhood investors. It makes leverage super easy without having to understand margins or debt leverage. 5. Multi-asset collateral: making existing holdings productive Another development worth highlighting is Arcus's multi-asset collateral system. On October 19, Arcus began rolling out support for eligible tokenized stocks and wrapped ETH as collateral for perpetual positions. Why does that matter? Imagine you hold $10,000 worth of tokenized SPY. You want to maintain your exposure to the S&P 500, but you also want to trade perpetual futures. Traditionally, you might have to sell some of your SPY or deposit additional stablecoins to fund those positions. With Arcus's multi-asset collateral system, eligible traders can borrow against their existing holdings to support perp margin. Your SPY exposure stays intact while you gain additional trading capacity. This is potentially a meaningful capital-efficiency improvement. But there's no free lunch. You're introducing borrowing costs, collateral haircuts, liquidation risks, and exposure to multiple correlated positions. Still, the broader direction is clear. Arcus wants the assets users already own to become productive throughout its trading ecosystem. 6. There's an important architectural trade-off I also want to highlight something that I think deserves attention. Arcus is not a fully on-chain matching engine in the same sense as Hyperliquid's native on-chain CLOB. Its perpetual exchange uses a hybrid architecture, with off-chain execution and an on-chain custody and settlement framework. This can help with speed and throughput, but it introduces assumptions about the validator set responsible for confirming exchange state. OpenZeppelin's July 2026 audit of the rootchain contracts explicitly discusses these trust assumptions. The contracts provide custody controls and an emergency exit mechanism, but they do not independently verify every economic state transition made by the exchange. This doesn't automatically make the architecture unsafe. It does mean that when evaluating decentralization and security, we need to look beyond whether the collateral is held in smart contracts. An exchange can be self-custodial while still requiring substantial trust in its execution infrastructure. That's a distinction I think traders should understand. 7. My takeaways After looking deeper into Arcus, my perspective has shifted a bit. Initially, I thought its most interesting advantage was its distribution relationship with Robinhood. I still think that's important. But from a product standpoint, I'm increasingly interested in the combination of tokenized assets, reusable collateral, and tokenized derivatives positions. These features point toward a future where users don't simply trade financial assets on-chain. They can also use those assets as collateral, package their positions into transferable instruments, and potentially deploy them across an interconnected financial ecosystem. That's an interesting vision. However, a technically useful product doesn't necessarily translate into a successful business. Can Arcus attract enough liquidity for pTokens to become widely tradable? Will external protocols actually integrate them? Can its collateral model remain robust during severe market volatility? And how much of its activity is organic rather than driven by points and incentives? Those are the questions that matter. In Part 3, I'll dig into Arcus's actual traction, trading economics, incentives, and competitive positioning against Variational and Hyperliquid. Ultimately, I want to answer one question: Is Arcus building genuinely valuable financial infrastructure, or simply introducing more sophisticated products into an already crowded perp DEX market? More soon!

Beyond @variational_io: @arcus_xyz 1/3 - The @dYdX Rebirth Hey everyone! Kicking off my new perp DEX research series with @arcus_xyz. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about where the perp DEX market is headed, especially as more traditional financial assets make their way on-chain. I genuinely believe the next wave of adoption could come from people who aren't necessarily crypto-native. And that's what makes Arcus interesting to me. 1. What exactly is Arcus? Arcus is a decentralized exchange built by the team behind dYdX in partnership with Robinhood Crypto. Launched in July 2026 on Robinhood Chain, Arcus brings together 24/7 spot trading of tokenized stocks, perpetual futures on equities, crypto, commodities, and indices, cross-margin trading with up to 50x leverage on eligible markets, and self-custodial trading accounts. But I think there's something much more interesting here than just another exchange offering stock perps. Well, obviously. I wouldn't have bothered writing about this otherwise. 2. Why did the dYdX team build Arcus? For those unfamiliar, dYdX was one of the earliest major decentralized perpetual exchanges. It helped pioneer on-chain derivatives trading long before the current perp DEX meta. But the market has changed significantly since then. Hyperliquid has demonstrated just how large decentralized derivatives trading can become, while platforms like Variational are pushing the boundaries of what kinds of assets can be traded. So rather than simply launching another crypto perp exchange, the team behind dYdX is pursuing a different opportunity. Bringing traditional financial markets on-chain. It's worth clarifying that Arcus is a separate product. The original dYdX Chain continues operating independently but have been struggling to maintain market share, to be frank. 3. Why Robinhood? Robinhood built its business around making financial markets more accessible to retail investors. Crypto exchanges, meanwhile, have historically focused on a much more crypto-native audience. Arcus sits at the intersection of these two worlds. Its partnership with Robinhood Crypto gives it access to an ecosystem centered around tokenized traditional assets. And importantly, this isn't just a theoretical partnership. In October, Robinhood Wallet integrated Arcus as one of its execution providers for tokenized stock swaps. That means eligible users can have their trades routed through Arcus without necessarily visiting the Arcus exchange itself. Think about the implications. Most emerging perp DEXes need to spend heavily acquiring users, attracting market makers, and building distribution. Arcus potentially has another path: becoming financial infrastructure embedded within applications where users already trade. Now, being a Robinhood partner doesn't automatically guarantee distribution or order flow. But it certainly makes the business model worth investigating. 4. My bigger thesis: The next generation of traders might not be crypto-native. I've said before that I don't think the perp DEX meta is dead. My biggest bull case is broader participation in on-chain markets, particularly from people whose primary interest isn't actually crypto. Imagine someone who wants to trade NVIDIA earnings, hedge their exposure to the S&P 500, or speculate on commodity prices over the weekend. They might have no interest in BTC, ETH, or the latest memecoin. But they might still have a very good reason to use blockchain-based financial infrastructure. That's the opportunity Arcus is trying to capture. Traditional financial markets have fixed trading hours, fragmented infrastructure, and limitations on when and how certain assets can be traded. Crypto demonstrated that markets can operate continuously. Arcus is trying to bring that experience to traditional financial assets. 5. My initial thoughts I think Arcus has an interesting combination of advantages: - An experienced derivatives team from dYdX who also understand failure - A strategic relationship with Robinhood Crypto - Exposure to the growing tokenized-asset ecosystem - Products designed around both spot and leveraged traditional assets But there are plenty of unanswered questions. How much of its Robinhood relationship translates into actual users? How does it provide reliable pricing when underlying stock markets are closed? Can tokenized stocks become more useful than simply synthetic exposure to traditional assets? And perhaps most importantly, how does Arcus compete against Hyperliquid and Variational, which are already expanding aggressively into RWA derivatives? Those are the questions I'll be exploring throughout this series. In Part 2, I'll dive into Arcus's actual technology, including its RFQ execution model, perpetual trading infrastructure, and one particularly interesting innovation: pTokens. As always, the goal isn't to promote a particular DEX. It's to understand what makes it different, whether those differences actually matter, and where the industry might be headed. More soon.

Hey everyone! Trying something new. We all love @variational_io. At least, I know most of my X network does. I love Variational too. But when I share how good Variational is, there needs to be a benchmark. This is why I want to start spending some time exploring other emerging perp DEXes, comparing them to Variational, and sharing my analysis with everyone. It's an opportunity for me to learn more about the space while sharing something I think I do best: analysis. The plan is to explore different technologies, business models, tokenomics, and competitive advantages, then share my findings with you all. My current list: @arcus_xyz @risextrade @TxFlow_L1 I'm planning to spend at least a week researching each DEX. I want to go beyond surface-level comparisons and really understand what makes each protocol different, where its competitive edge lies, and whether it has what it takes to succeed long term. I don't think the perp DEX meta is dead. Far from it. My biggest bull case for the entire space is the eventual influx of non-crypto-native participants into crypto, similar to what we saw in 2020. I genuinely believe we're still in the early stages of something much bigger. But that doesn't mean every perp DEX will succeed. As the space gets more competitive, identifying the right players will become increasingly important. And that's exactly what I want to explore. If there are other perp DEXes you'd like me to look into, feel free to drop a comment or DM me! One promise I'll make: I'll keep my analysis as objective as possible without sacrificing my own perspective and insights. I'm not here to blindly promote protocols. I'm here to understand them, challenge my own assumptions, and share what I learn. Let's see where this goes.

Hey guys, it’s been a while! I want to get back to posting consistently, but between a demanding job and wanting to share something worth reading, it hasn’t been easy. Mindless bullposting just isn’t my style... How do you guys find that balance? Anyway, I recently listened to @variational_lvs's discussion about Variational Pro and took some notes. Pro has always been a bit of a question mark for me. I suspect a lot of Omni users feel the same. We’re less familiar with OTC derivatives, how the market works, and where Variational fits. But the recent session really cleared things up on the vision that Variational has for Pro: 1. Pro could become bigger than Omni. I quote Lucas. That’s a big claim, but the opportunity starts to make sense when you look beyond retail perps. OTC derivatives are a massive market, and parts of the trading process still involve a surprising amount of manual coordination. Think requesting quotes, comparing offers, and managing everything after a trade. Pro is targeting that friction. Huge TAM untapped by on-chain protocols. 2. Institutions don’t have to reinvent their entire workflow. One of my biggest questions was how this fits into the legal framework institutions already use. My takeaway: Variational provides technology that can fit into existing trading relationships and ISDA-based workflows. That seems like a much more practical path to adoption. This means that they're mostly safe from regulatory risk that a lot of crypto protocols have been dealing with, so that eliminates another massive question mark. 3. The product is an automated RFQ platform. An institution requests a quote for a product it wants to trade. Counterparties respond with offers, and the platform helps coordinate the process. Smart contracts support the onchain execution and management of those trades. The appeal is pretty straightforward: make a cumbersome process easier to run. Just like Omni. It turns out Omni was just a stress-test of the RFQ model. They now have proof it works. 4. Stablecoin adoption could be a meaningful tailwind. As institutions become more comfortable holding and using stablecoins, the step toward using platforms like Pro potentially gets smaller. The connection between stablecoins and onchain financial infrastructure feels more tangible to me here. 5. Pro is immune from the chicken-and-egg problem. Institutions want liquidity before joining. Liquidity needs participants. Variational’s approach is to bring in market makers that can provide liquidity and help demonstrate that the platform is useful. What stood out was the emphasis on institutions actually wanting the technology. All of a sudden, the chicken-and-egg problem is solved. 6. Why should the community care about Pro? One potential benefit discussed was opening access to more niche products for retail over time. I’m curious to see how that translates into actual products and access. Institutional adoption would be interesting on its own, but what it enables for users matters too. My biggest takeaway: I’d been looking at Variational mostly through Omni. Pro makes the broader ambition much clearer. Still plenty to prove, but I finally have a better understanding of what they’re building and why it could matter. Feel free to add if I missed anything, but I'm seriously looking forward to the innovation that is unfolding before us. It's really, really fascinating. I'll be back with more interesting things I find. Another protocol has been piquing my interest because of how rapidly its been evolving. Doing some thorough research now.

Cocoa makes me bullish on Variational. Looks like @variational_io is back on the grind expanding Swaps. Pretty much what I expected after last week's private dinner. Just this week, they've added: - CN50 - Cocoa Beans -VXI (VIX exposure) But I think the most interesting one here is actually Cocoa. I've been publicly excited to hedge my chocolate chip cookie expenses by shorting cocoa beans, but there's obviously more to this. At first glance, listing cocoa futures on a crypto trading platform might seem completely random. But Variational seems to be on top of news because I think this listing is news driven. Cocoa has been moving on renewed concerns around the 2026/27 West African crop with weather conditions, weaker crop development, and potential supply issues in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. In other words, it's a news-driven macro trade. You can see that Variational's architecture starts to become super powerful. Omni isn't dependent on building a traditional onchain liquidity pool for every new market. Its RFQ model + vertically integrated market-making infrastructure means that when there is an underlying asset with TradFi liquidity, Variational can potentially turn it into a tradeable Swap incredibly quickly. Cocoa is a perfect example. News breaks, a market suddenly becomes relevant, traders want exposure, Variational can list the Swap. You don't have to wait months for someone to bootstrap liquidity and pray enough traders show up. This is one of the biggest advantages of the RFQ model that I think people still underestimate. If a major event happens somewhere in the world and there's a market you suddenly want to trade, there's a good chance Variational can have it on Omni in the blink of an eye. Crypto, stocks, indices, commodities, volatility and probably a lot more to come. Swaps are starting to show what Omni was actually built for. Oh, and China exposure and US exposure on the same platform feels nice too.

Been a while guys! Settling in for my new consulting job (web 0 i guess? lol) got the best of me and I slacked off, but I'm back to give you guys some insights that I harvested from the @variational_io event. Shout out to @JustinCBram @hansolar21 @sishido1011 @sjtional for organizing! Got the chance to speak with the team in person, and there were a few things I thought were worth sharing. Obviously, some of this is my interpretation of the conversations, not official announcements. 1. Roadmap Right now, the focus seems to be: - Expanding/distributing Variational Swaps - Getting the API infrastructure ready - Releasing a mobile app My impression was that Variational Pro may not be the immediate priority before these are completed. I could be wrong here, but that's the takeaway I got from the conversations and the presentation. 2. Probably the most interesting detail of the night: Lucas wasn't there. For a community-focused event, I was initially surprised because I knew how much emphasis Lucas had on connecting with the community. Turns out he had to attend an important investor meeting. Emphasis on investor. Does that mean something bigger is being worked on? Investment, partnership, strategic relationship? No confirmation whatsoever. But definitely something I'll be watching closely... and I'm excited 3. Those who know, know. The 32% Genesis Distribution is very intentional. One thing that stood out to me was that 32% wasn't just a random tokenomics number. It was deliberately chosen to send a message about how community-oriented Variational wants to be (bigger number than Hyperliquid!). As users, it's easy to look at airdrops purely from the perspective of: How much am I getting? But from the protocol's perspective, tokens are also incredibly valuable capital. Protocols have no obligation to distribute such a massive portion of their network to early users. Variational chose to. And when you combine that with the broader tokenomics structure, I think they're setting $VAR up to align the community and the protocol for the long term. Variational rewarded the people who used the product early. My expectation is that they also want to reward the people who genuinely believe in the network, own $VAR, and stick around after TGE. I choose to believe in the team. 4. Sybil detection is very real. This was another thing I came away pretty convinced about. They're actively looking at inorganic behavior. I understand users farm Variational, so this is for them. I would stay VERY far away from: - Self-referrals - Artificial volume churn - Obvious multi-account behavior - Anything that looks designed purely to exploit the points system At this stage, risking your entire allocation to squeeze out a few extra points makes zero sense. Trade naturally. Use the product. Don't get cute. Overall, the event made me even more confident that Variational isn't thinking about TGE as the finish line. They're building for what comes after it. Swaps will continue to expand, API will come, mobile traders will flow in, and Pro will take over. $VAR

I got invited to the private Vari Dinner in Seoul! If you're going to the Sept 30th Variational Dinner, drop a comment or send me a DM. Would love to connect with you guys before the event. Day 17/17 of why I’m bullish on @variational_io: Tomorrow is the Variational private dinner. And rather than ending this series with another post explaining why I’m bullish, I thought I’d end it with something more useful: the questions I actually want to ask the team. Yesterday I wrote about what could make my Variational thesis wrong. So these are the things I’d genuinely like to understand better. 1. How does OLP scale from here? OLP is one of my favorite parts of Variational. But as Omni grows, so does the amount of capital and risk OLP potentially has to manage. How does the team think about scaling OLP as volume, OI, and average trade size grows? And longer term, does OLP remain the dominant counterparty on Omni, or does the liquidity model become more distributed? 2. What needs to happen for spreads to get materially better? RFQ gives Variational a lot of flexibility, but ultimately traders care about execution. How much of current spread improvement comes from more OLP capital, better hedging, external liquidity sources, and more user flow naturally offsetting each other? I’d love to understand what the team thinks spreads on Omni could realistically look like at scale. 3. How far can Swaps actually go? This is probably one of my biggest questions. If Variational can bring TradFi liquidity and financing on-chain today, what does that look like several years from now? Would we have more exotic products? What about FX? And how much of the traditional derivatives universe can realistically be accessed through this model? 4. What does success for Pro actually look like? Pro is one of the most exciting, and least proven, parts of the thesis for me. Who is the initial customer? Crypto funds? Market makers? How's the PMF? And what would make an institution move part of its existing OTC derivatives workflow onto Variational? 5. What are the strategic partnerships actually unlocking? The team said the TGE timeline changed because of major strategic partnerships that could redefine Variational’s trajectory. This is obviously the one everyone wants to know about... But beyond the names involved, I’m more interested in what do these partnerships make possible that Variational couldn’t do before? After spending the last 17 days writing about Variational, I think that’s what I’m most curious to hear directly from the people building it. There’s a lot I’m bullish on. There’s also a lot I still don’t know. That’s exactly why I’m excited for tomorrow. If there’s anything you guys want me to ask the Variational team at the dinner, drop it below or DM me. I’ll try to bring some of the best questions with me. And if you’re attending tomorrow: PLEASE come say hi. Would love to finally meet some of the Vari believers I’ve been interacting with online.

I got invited to the private Vari Dinner in Seoul! If you're going to the Sept 30th Variational Dinner, drop a comment or send me a DM. Would love to connect with you guys before the event. Day 16/17 of why I’m bullish on @variational_io: What could make me wrong about Variational? After 15 straight days of talking about why I’m bullish, I think it’s only fair to talk about the risks too. Because no matter how much I like the team, the architecture, or the vision, execution is still everything. Here are the things I’m watching most closely. 1. OLP concentration OLP is one of the most interesting parts of Omni. But it’s also a dependency. Right now, a lot of Omni’s liquidity, pricing and risk management ultimately runs through OLP. That vertical integration creates advantages, but it also means Variational needs OLP to keep scaling safely as volume, markets and position sizes grow. It's almost like a high risk-high reward model. 2. Spreads RFQ lets Vari support markets that would be difficult to bootstrap with traditional order books. But the trade-off is obvious: if quotes aren’t competitive, traders will go somewhere else. For Variational to really scale, spreads need to stay competitive across more assets, more sizes and more market conditions. We're seeing that spreads are great for swaps which is why I'm infinitely bullish on the trajectory of the protocol: single stock swaps will make trading on Variational actually seamless. 3. TradFi integration is hard Like I said, I’m extremely bullish on swaps and the idea of bringing TradFi liquidity on-chain. But this is also one of the hardest parts of the thesis. Traditional markets have trading hours, holidays, financing costs, and regulation. Connecting all of that cleanly to an on-chain venue is not trivial. But this is where we believe in the team as I've talked about in previous posts. 4. Competition is brutal Hyperliquid, Lighter and other exchanges aren’t standing still. Centralized exchanges are still extremely dominant. And in TradFi, Variational would eventually be competing for flow against institutions with decades of infrastructure and relationships. Being technically interesting isn’t enough. I think what Lighter is doing extremely well is positioning itself with Robinhood for the inevitable inflow of retail traders that discover perps to trade stocks instead of limited number of futures contracts like NQ or ES. Variational seems to have a better shot at a B2B angle with Pro. 5. Pro still has to become real Pro is one of the parts of the Variational thesis I’m most excited about. But it’s also one of the least proven. In the coming weeks, I'm hoping to hear about what Pro is, how it works, and who it will be available to. Clearly, there are real risks. There are still things that need to be proven. But after spending this much time digging into the product, team and architecture… I still like the bet. That's exactly why it's so important to know who is building your protocol. Tomorrow: the final post. A list of questions that I would like to ask at the Variational event. Please feel free to throw in your questions in this post or tomorrow's post and I'll try to ask them for you.

I got invited to the private Vari Dinner in Seoul! If you're going to the Sept 30th Variational Dinner, drop a comment or send me a DM. Would love to connect with you guys before the event. Day 15/17 of why I’m bullish on @variational_io: Two days before the dinner, I figured I do a recap of everything I talked about. Tomorrow, "we'll do a what I think could go wrong" post and the day after will be questions to ask at the Variational event. I don’t think RFQ, OLP, Swaps, Omni and Pro should be looked at as separate features. They’re all pieces of the same thesis. And once I started looking at Variational that way, the project made a lot more sense to me. 1. Start at the bottom: The Variational Protocol. The underlying infrastructure for peer-to-peer trading, clearing and settlement of derivatives on-chain. This is the foundation. 2. Then RFQ. Instead of requiring every derivative to have a deep public order book, one counterparty can simply ask: What price will you give me for this trade? That makes it possible to price a much broader range of derivatives on demand. 3. Then we have OLP. For Omni, Variational built its own liquidity provider on top of that architecture. OLP provides capital, generates quotes, manages risk and hedges exposure. So instead of waiting for external market makers to support every new market, Variational has vertically integrated that layer itself. 4. Omni Now package all of that into a product anyone can actually use. One account. 500+ markets. Crypto, equities, commodities, indices and more. Perps and swaps. This is the application most of us know Variational through. And this is how people come up with valuations for Vari. But then things start getting more interesting. 5. Swaps Now the same on-chain trading experience can access liquidity sourced from traditional financial institutions, with financing tied to the economics of the underlying TradFi market. Suddenly Variational isn’t operating purely inside crypto liquidity anymore. 6. Finally, Pro. Take the same underlying protocol and let institutions create customizable derivatives, request quotes from counterparties, agree on bespoke terms, and handle collateral + settlement on-chain. You put number 1~6 together and you can see why my Variational thesis has changed so much over time. If I only looked at Omni, I could describe Variational as a perp DEX with lots of markets. But that's increasingly not how I see it. I see a team trying to build a generalized infrastructure layer for derivatives: crypto + TradFi, retail + institutions, standardized + bespoke, perps + swaps + potentially much more All settling through the same underlying protocol. Whether they can execute on that full vision is obviously the big question. But that is the bet I find interesting.

I got invited to the private Vari Dinner in Seoul! If you're going to the Sept 30th Variational Dinner, drop a comment or send me a DM. Would love to connect with you guys before the event. Day 14/17 of why I’m bullish on @variational_io: Variational doesn’t need to beat Hyperliquid at being Hyperliquid. And I think this is important when thinking about where Vari fits in the perp DEX landscape. Hyperliquid has built an incredible product. It took the CEX experience on-chain with a fully on-chain order book. This allows for extremely fast execution, deep crypto-native liquidity. Its own L1 and ecosystem built around that trading infrastructure. And trying to build a slightly better version of that would be a pretty difficult thesis. But that’s not what Variational is doing. Vari is approaching derivatives from a fundamentally different direction. Like I mentioned earlier, they use an RFQ model where they ask for a price and a counterparty quotes the trade. So instead of relying entirely on traditional external market makers, Vari has OLP in Omni. Instead of focusing primarily on crypto-native assets, Vari already offers hundreds of crypto AND TradFi markets this way. Completely different model from Hyperliquid. Obviously having an on-chain orderbook has its advantages, especially in execution speed. But Variational can target traders that don't mind execution speed and care more about asset diversity (swing traders and pair traders). Moreover, instead of stopping at perps, Vari introduced swaps with liquidity sourced from TradFi institutions. This would be difficult to do if Variational used an orderbook. And instead of building only standardized exchange products Variational Pro is being designed for customizable OTC derivatives between institutions and market makers. These three differences make me increasingly think comparing Vari purely on “can it take perp volume from Hyperliquid?” misses the bigger picture. Of course perp volume matters. Liquidity matters. Execution matters. And Hyperliquid is an obvious benchmark for any on-chain trading venue. Long live Jeff. But the long-term Variational thesis doesn’t require Variational > Hyperliquid at order-book crypto perp trading. It can be Hyperliquid dominates one model of on-chain finance while Variational builds another centered around: - integrated market making - bilateral derivatives - hundreds of underlying markets - TradFi liquidity - customizable institutional products And potentially, these models serve very different types of trades. If I want an extremely liquid BTC perp and an order-book experience, a CLOB makes a lot of sense. But what if I want exposure to a niche TradFi asset, a large block trade, or longer term holds which requires predictable TradFi-linked financing or a bespoke option with custom terms? That’s where Variational’s architecture starts getting much more interesting. I don’t think the future of on-chain derivatives necessarily has one winner or one market structure. And my bull case for Vari isn’t it will become another Hyperliquid. Instead, it may become something fundamentally different. And that's why I'm bullish on Variational.

I got invited to the private Vari Dinner in Seoul! If you're going to the Sept 30th Variational Dinner, drop a comment or send me a DM. Would love to connect with you guys before the event. Day 13/17 of why I’m bullish on @variational_io: At some point, every crypto thesis becomes a bet on the team. Over the past 12 days, I’ve talked about the technical aspects: RFQ, OLP, vertical integration of the market making process, 500+ markets, Pro, Swaps, etc. The vision is obviously ambitious. But one of the biggest reasons I’m comfortable being bullish on that vision is the people actually trying to build it. I already talked about Lucas and Edward earlier in this series. They didn’t come into crypto hoping to build a perp DEX. They came from quantitative trading and market making, built Qu Capital, went through Genesis, then ran Variational as a proprietary trading firm before turning that experience into the protocol. But it’s not just the founders. Variational says the broader team brings experience from places like: Jane Street, IMC, Virtu, Google, and Meta. And their backgrounds matter so much because look at what Variational is actually trying to build. You need people who understand: Market structure: How should derivatives actually trade? Market making: How do you price hundreds of markets and manage the resulting risk? Engineering: How do you make all of this work reliably at scale? TradFi: How do swaps, financing, OTC derivatives and institutional liquidity actually work? Crypto: How do you take those concepts and redesign them around on-chain collateral, settlement and permissionless infrastructure? That’s an unusually broad skill set. And IMO, the execution so far gives that background more credibility than just having impressive names on a team page. Omni now supports 500+ markets. The protocol has already processed hundreds of billions in volume. Swaps are live. Pro is being built. A trading API is coming. And yesterday we learned there are apparently major strategic partnerships still to be revealed before TGE. Obviously, none of that guarantees where Variational ends up. But when I look at everything they’re trying to connect: crypto trading + market making + TradFi liquidity + institutional derivatives + on-chain settlement There aren't many teams whose backgrounds I would rather see attempting it. That’s why the team itself is a major part of my Variational thesis.

I got invited to the private Vari Dinner in Seoul! If you're going to the Sept 30th Variational Dinner, drop a comment or send me a DM. Would love to connect with you guys before the event. Also received a shoutout from my Chinese friend @Naive_BNB and would like to publicly thank him! If I reached my Chinese CT brothers, I'd like to say hi. 你好! Day 12/17 of why I'm bullish on @variational_io: Well… this post wasn't planned, but today we finally got the $VAR TGE update. It's still relevant because it adds to why I am bullish on Variational. And there is A LOT to unpack. Bit of a different post, less analysis and more news sharing today. More analysis tomorrow :) First, the bad news: The points program was originally supposed to end at the end of Q3, with $VAR launching shortly after. Instead, Variational says the timeline is being pushed back because of “major strategic partnerships that redefine Variational’s trajectory.” We don’t know what those partnerships are yet. So for now, I’m not going to speculate, but I've talked to a few of you and it seems like there is a bit of a consensus. The good news: $VAR allocation: - 32% Genesis Distribution - 18% Ecosystem Reserve - 50% Team + Investors And that 32% Genesis Distribution goes directly to point holders, 100% unlocked at TGE, no vesting. Meanwhile, the Team + Investor allocation is locked for 12 months after TGE and then unlocks over a minimum of 3 years. That alignment is something I really like. There's another detail that might be even more interesting long term: Variational intends to use 100% of revenue directed to the treasury to buy and burn $VAR. We still need the actual details around token utility and the buyback mechanism, which the team says will come before TGE. But at least conceptually: protocol activity --> treasury revenue --> $VAR buybacks --> burn is a very interesting value-accrual mechanism. Points will also continue until TGE which seems to be an issue for some users. 150,000 new points every week. Obviously, that means existing point holders will continue to get diluted somewhat. But it also gives new users a final window to participate before launch and a higher FDV when TGE does happen. And the most interesting part of today's announcement might actually be what happens before TGE. Variational says the final stretch will include Omni leaving private beta and going public mainnet, expanding swaps, APIs, and strategic partnerships. After waiting this long, I'd much rather see Variational launch $VAR alongside a stronger protocol, major partnerships and a clearer token model than rush it out just to hit the original timeline. So the reasons why I'm bullish? They're trying to leave a mark in the industry by airdropping 32%, bigger than Hyperliquid's 31%. In other words, Lucas and Edward care about the community as much as Jeff. It just confirms that Variational is truly a protocol for the community and I expect CT to find value in this and in turn expand the mindshare necessary to develop this project into something generational. Buy and hold $VAR.