Variational founder Lucas Schuermann stated that repeatedly questioning the endgame is essential to truly channel the efforts of the founders into themselves and their 25-person team.

He mentioned that the team is running a protocol that is already substantial in scale and embedded in the crypto economy by any metric, so there must first be a vision, an endgame, and a reason to get up every day and work hard; otherwise, they cannot be responsible for this infrastructure. The product's endgame is summarized by him as: global traders should be able to trade in global markets, eliminating the red tape, restrictions, tax burdens, fees, and onboarding processes that fragment the market, especially those predatory fee platforms he prefers not to name.

On a broader level, he emphasized that he likes to create things that people will use. Seeing new technologies being utilized, or even replicated, gives him a sense of fulfillment; for many entrepreneurs, pride comes from creating something and seeing it used. He also applies this to trading products: enabling global traders to access a unified account, rather than being fragmented by exchange licenses, broker onboarding, and local taxes.

Variational was co-founded by Lucas Schuermann and Edward Yu. The two met in their dorm at Columbia University, founded the quantitative fund Qu Capital in 2017, and after being acquired by Digital Currency Group in 2019, joined Genesis Trading, where they served as Vice President of Engineering and Vice President of Quantitative Trading, handling over $250 billion in OTC transactions. After leaving in 2021, they converted their proprietary trading profits into protocol development. The company has completed approximately $10.3 million in seed funding and a $50 million Series A round led by Dragonfly, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures, totaling approximately $61.8 million in funding.

The retail application Omni operates on a broker rather than an order book exchange model, quoting and hedging from a single counterparty, Omni Liquidity Provider, while aggregating liquidity from centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and traditional financial market makers, claiming zero trading fees and monetizing through spreads. The platform's cumulative trading volume has exceeded $200 billion, with personal pages stating over $275 billion, listing around 450 perpetual markets, and open interest ranging from hundreds of millions to $750 million, with physical asset perpetuals like gold, silver, copper, and crude oil already launched, aiming to bring over 100 traditional markets on-chain. The institutional product Pro continues to advance as originally designed, relying on chat software, wire transfers, and legal teams to complete OTC derivatives clearing.

In terms of market mechanisms, buy orders come from retail and professional traders seeking unified margin, zero fees, and global varieties, while sell orders and hedging are routed by OLP to centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and traditional market makers in New York, Chicago, and Amsterdam. This is a clear product and financing event-driven approach: Series A funds are used to deeply connect traditional finance to the blockchain, rather than incentivizing isolated order books. Funds flow from venture capital into a Cayman entity, then into liquidity routing, RWA varieties, and cross-margin engines; benefiting are traders who can trade crypto and commodities with a single account while avoiding high fees, as well as traditional market makers providing hedging; pressured are perpetual exchanges relying on listing incentives to maintain thin order books, profiting from fees and funding rates.

On-chain public metrics show that trading has entered the top tier of on-chain perpetuals, with open interest still significantly lower than Hyperliquid, indicating that traffic is migrating towards the broker model, while depth still relies on off-chain hedging.

Source: Public Information