The tokenized asset market continues to expand rapidly. Startup Variational, which is developing a decentralized platform for derivatives trading, announced it has raised $50 million in a new investment round led by Dragonfly.
Bain Capital Crypto, Coinbase Ventures, and several other major crypto funds also participated in the deal. The company plans to use the funds to develop perpetual contracts tied to real assets—from oil and gold to silver and copper.
The Bet Is on the Market for ‘Real’ Perpetual Contracts
Variational is betting on the RWA derivatives segment. These are perpetual contracts that allow trading of assets like WTI, gold, or copper without an expiration date.
Currently, such products remain relatively niche in DeFi, but the market is growing quickly amid interest in tokenizing traditional financial instruments.
Variational CEO Lukas Schurmann said that perpetual contracts on real assets could soon surpass even BTC and ETH perps combined in terms of volume.
According to him, the market is gradually shifting from pure crypto speculation to broader financial instruments, where users want direct access to commodities and classic assets via blockchain.
The Company Has Already Processed More Than $200 Billion in Volume
Despite its young age, Variational is already showing large volumes. Since its launch in 2025, the platform has processed more than $200 billion in trading volume.
The company is building infrastructure that aims to connect the liquidity of traditional markets and DeFi. Instead of creating separate weak order books for each new asset, Variational is trying to aggregate liquidity directly from existing financial venues.
This is currently considered one of the main problems of the on-chain derivatives market. Outside of top cryptocurrencies, liquidity is often too low for large traders and institutional participants.
Dragonfly Compared Variational’s Model to Wall Street Infrastructure
Dragonfly partner Haseeb Qureshi said that most DeFi exchanges are still trying to rebuild liquidity for each asset separately. As a result, many markets remain too thin and unstable.
According to him, traditional finance solved this problem decades ago through the RFQ system—request for quotes—where market makers provide liquidity on demand and simultaneously hedge positions on major venues like CME or NYSE.
Variational is trying to bring a similar model to blockchain infrastructure. The company uses smart contracts for margin trading, settlements in stablecoins, and access to institutional liquidity through on-chain mechanisms.
DeFi Begins to Compete With Commodity Markets
Investor interest is especially focused on the commodity asset market. Amid volatility in oil, gold, and interest rates, demand for access to commodity contracts within the crypto ecosystem has started to grow rapidly.
For users, this means the ability to trade oil, metals, and other assets directly through crypto wallets without traditional brokers. In addition, the futures model allows positions to be opened around the clock, not just during traditional exchange hours.
Against this backdrop, DeFi is gradually moving beyond the purely cryptocurrency market and approaching a full-fledged alternative financial infrastructure.
Dragonfly Increases Its Bet on Infrastructure Projects
For Dragonfly, this investment became one of the largest after raising $650 million of its own a few months earlier. At that time, the fund was called one of the few major crypto investors able to successfully close a large round amid a challenging market.
Now the fund is betting specifically on infrastructure for trading tokenized assets. According to Dragonfly, the winners of the next cycle will not be classic crypto exchanges, but platforms capable of uniting the liquidity of traditional finance and blockchain in a single system.
Why the RWA Market Is Becoming One of the Main Trends
The tokenized real asset sector remains one of the fastest-growing areas of the crypto market. Banks, funds, and major asset managers are actively testing tokenization of bonds, money market funds, stocks, and commodity contracts. Against this backdrop, the derivatives market looks like the logical next stage.
Especially after tokenized US Treasury bonds and money funds began attracting billions of dollars in liquidity. Now attention is gradually shifting to more complex products—including perpetual contracts on commodities and traditional financial assets.
What’s Next?
Variational plans to launch more than 100 on-chain perps with deep liquidity, targeting not only retail traders but also institutional participants.
If the company really manages to unite the liquidity of the crypto market and traditional venues, the RWA derivatives market could become one of the largest segments of DeFi in the coming years.
For now, investors are increasingly betting that the next wave of crypto industry growth will be linked not to memecoins, but to the transfer of traditional financial instruments to blockchain.
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