Variational predicts RWA perpetuals will soon be the biggest contract class in DeFi
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The company is initially offering perpetual futures on real-world assets including oil, silver, copper and gold.
By Olivier Acuna|Edited by Sheldon Reback
May 21, 2026, 1:57 p.m. 2 min read
- Variational, an onchain derivatives trading protocol, said it raised $50 million in a round led by Dragonfly with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.
- The company plans to use the funding to expand its derivatives trading services, including its range of perpetual futures tied to real-world assets such as gold, silver, copper and WTI crude oil.
- Variational, which says it has processed more than $200 billion in trading volume since 2025, aims to aggregate liquidity from traditional and onchain markets to offer over 100 onchain perpetual contracts with so-called TradFi-grade depth.
Variational, a peer-to-peer onchain derivatives trading protocol, said it raised $50 million in a round led by global investment fund Dragonfy with participation from companies including Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.
The money will be used to expand the Cayman Islands-based company’s derivatives trading services, it said in a statement released Thursday. The raise comes just as Variational introduces perpetual futures tied to real-world assets (RWAs) such as gold, silver, copper and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil.
“We believe RWA perpetuals will soon be the biggest contract class in decentralized finance (DeFi), bigger than bitcoin and ether combined,” Lucas V. Schuermann, CEO and co-founder at Variational, told CoinDesk.
Bitcoin BTC$76,929.45, the largest cryptocurrency, has a market capitalization of $1.6 trillion. Ether (ETH), the second-biggest, has $256 billion. Combined, they account for almost 68% of the total cryptocurrency market cap.
Variational said it has carried more than $200 billion in trading volume since its inception in 2025, and the new funds will enable it to build the infrastructure needed to route liquidity directly from traditional markets within the coming months. Its model is uniquely designed to aggregate and route liquidity from traditional and onchain markets, avoiding the need to build it from scratch on isolated marginal order books, the company said.
“Our Series A secures the capital and partners we need to bring [traditional finance] TradFi-grade depth to 100 plus onchain perps by aggregating liquidity from the source, rather than rebuilding thin order books for each new listing,” Schuermann said.
Dragonfly’s investment comes two months after it announced a $650 million raise, at the time was one of the largest in the sector, when many blockchain-focused VCs were struggling, Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi said. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this new investment.
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