Variational 融了 $50M,但拿它直接对标 Hyperliquid,我觉得并不准确。它更像是对 CLOB 的补充,甚至长期来看,会成为 CLOB 体系里的一个子集服务商。
因为 Variational 本质上不是 Dex,而是一个 Broker Dealer 结构。它解决的是另一类订单流:比如不希望产生 market impact 的 block order,或者 CLOB 很难建立深度的长尾资产。
但我觉得它最大的问题,不是产品,而是结构。
TradFi 里 RFQ 能成立,是因为 broker 会同时向多个 dealer 询价,dealer 之间的竞争会形成 spread 约束。
而现在 Variational 的 RFQ,只有自家 OLP 一个 dealer。
这意味着:
- 用户面对的是单一对手方;
- 定价没有外部约束;
- dealer 拥有巨大的信息优势;
- 甚至天然会产生 last look 问题。
归根究底是一个透明度 单一主体的问题,非常不符合我对DeFi的哲学观。
很多链上项目表面上在做 DeFi,底层却越来越像传统金融里的 internalization system:流动性被少数主体控制,透明度下降,用户可能获得“更顺滑的体验”,但不是更公平的市场。
当然,商业世界并不在乎你的金融哲学。
只要能服务好特定用户,它依然可能是个成功生意。Variational 很可能 targeting 的本来就不是 crypto native trader,而是 non-crypto 的机构和不专业散户。
CLOBs are not going to take us to the RWA promised land.
Today Hyperliquid owns the liquidity for a handful of RWA macro names. But outside the top 10 traded assets (which are ~90% of volume) liquidity falls off a cliff. When there's enough retail demand, order books can work. But "perps on everything" is a different problem, and TradFi solved it decades ago.
The answer isn't every venue rebuilding its own order book. That's not what Robinhood does, it's not what Schwab does, and it's not what DeFi should be doing either.
Building your own book for every asset means bootstrapping demand ticker by ticker, renting liquidity with subsidies, and ending up with thin markets that blow out 200x the moment news hits. It's like sucking the ocean of TradFi liquidity through a straw.
Variational skips all of it via the RFQ model. RFQ is how institutions like Dragonfly actually trade. In RFQ, dealers quote just-in-time and hedge on the primary venue as orders come in. This lets Variational mainline TradFi liquidity directly and mirror it on-chain. Margin in smart contracts, settlement in stablecoins, liquidity aggregated from the people who already trade on the biggest underlying markets, like the CME and NYSE.
It makes it permissionless to access the same depth and spreads the big boys get. With the cold start problem gone, new markets can ship at the speed of software.
By next year I expect RWA perps to be the biggest contract class on-chain, bigger than BTC and ETH perps combined. That's how crypto truly becomes the market for everything.
I believe the platform that wins that won't look like a traditional exchange.
Proud to lead Variational's $50M Series A.
Watch this space.