Stories by Vara Network on Medium

Your AI Agent Just Learned How to Build on Vara

Vara Network — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:17:44 GMT

Your AI Agent Just Learned How to Build on Vara

There’s a quiet frustration in blockchain development with AI agents. You describe what you want to build, the agent confidently writes something, and it looks right — until it doesn’t. Not because the agent was careless, but because every chain has its own conventions, its own execution model, its own specific way of doing things. General knowledge only gets you so far.

Vara Skills is a direct answer to that.

Documentation That Talks Back

Think of it less like a plugin and more like onboarding a developer who already knows the stack.

When you install Vara Skills into your AI coding agent — Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, or soon Cursor and GitHub Copilot — you’re not adding new functionality. You’re installing structured knowledge: a library of workflow files the agent reads as context when you give it a task.

The concept is called a knowledge pack. The idea is deceptively simple: instead of feeding your agent the right context every session, you install the pack once. From that point on, the agent pulls the relevant guidance automatically — routing to the right workflow based on what you’re trying to do, without you having to explain the platform from scratch.

Say you want to build a staking contract. With the pack, the agent knows the right starting point, the right order of steps, and how to verify the result. It already has the map.

It’s documentation that talks back.

How It’s Structured

The pack has three layers that work together:

The Router sits at the top. When you describe a task, it reads what you’re trying to do and routes to the right workflow — without you needing to know which one to pick.

The Skills are the workflows themselves. New app from scratch. Adding a feature to an existing project. Debugging message flow. Running tests. Each one is a stage-by-stage guide for a specific builder scenario, written the way the Vara team actually builds.

The References are the ground truth underneath — a self-contained handbook on Vara’s execution model, framework architecture, and validation patterns. The skills point back to this when they need to explain why, not just how.

The complete flow looks like this:

describe task → router picks skill → skill stages the work → agent implements → tests verify → local node confirms

No guesswork at any stage.

Measured, Not Just Claimed

The pack ships alongside a benchmarking suite that actually measures whether it improves agent output — not by feel, but by structured evaluation across knowledge, codegen, workflow, and safety test cases.

The first milestone run produced four measurable uplifts and zero regressions. The methodology is public, the results are reproducible, and the catalog only keeps skills that demonstrate real improvement.

A Different Kind of Developer Tool

The traditional model for platform documentation was: write for humans, hope the AI picks it up, fix the output when it doesn’t. Vara Skills is a bet on a different model — structured, agent-readable knowledge that routes correctly and encodes good practice at the workflow level.

For builders who use AI agents as a core part of their workflow, that’s the difference between an agent that knows the platform and one that’s guessing at it.

The pack is actively growing. New skills are added as the catalog expands, and contributions are open — if you’ve built something on Vara and found a pattern worth encoding, the repo takes pull requests.

Two commands. That’s It.

Getting started takes about thirty seconds.

For Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/gear-foundation/vara-skills
/plugin install vara-skills@vara-skills

For Codex:

bash

git clone git@github.com:gear-foundation/vara-skills.git
cd vara-skills
bash scripts/install-codex-skills.sh

After that, describe what you want to build. The agent handles the rest.

GitHub: github.com/gear-foundation/vara-skills

Agentic development: vara.network/agentic-development

This is the first article in a series on agentic development with Vara. Next up: building your first Sails app from a single prompt — step by step.

Join Vara Network and Start Building

Vara Network is a stand-alone layer-1 decentralized network built and running on top of Gear Protocol. Created by Gear Foundation, Vara aims to be a performant and scalable network for developers to build market-leading decentralized applications. To expand Vara’s reach across ecosystems, Vara.eth acts as Vara’s Ethereum-facing application platform, bringing Vara’s execution model and performance benefits to the Ethereum ecosystem.

Whether you’re looking to build a new project or bring existing applications to the blockchain, Vara Network’s unique architecture offers benefits — including deep scalability and unparalleled composability — making it the ideal platform for developers looking to build the next generation of dApps.

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

OrderBook on Vara.eth

Vara Network — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:49:13 GMT

Abstraction

Decentralized finance has been built on top of Automated Market Makers (AMMs). Protocols like Uniswap and Curve defined the default UX of DeFi, and despite their well-known shortcomings, they continue to dominate.

AMMs solved the early bootstrapping problem: from day one, anyone could become a market maker by depositing tokens into a pool, with prices set by a simple formula. No professional desks, no complex matching engines — the contracts handled it all.

Ethereum’s technical limitations reinforced this path. A true CEX-like experience requires constant inserts, cancels, and partial fills — potentially thousands per pair. On Ethereum L1, every update is costly, and sequential execution kills any chance of high-frequency trading. AMMs, in contrast, compress the whole flow into a single swap call that fits neatly into Ethereum’s resource model.

Layer-2s eased the pain with cheaper gas and higher throughput, but often at a price of fragmented liquidity, bridge risk, and environments that don’t always inherit Ethereum’s security guarantees. For many traders, that means choosing between cost and composability, speed and trust.

Then there’s habit. DeFi users have learned to live with slippage; LPs have learned to live with impermanent loss. The AMM is the “devil you know”: familiar, composable, battle-tested — and good enough for a huge share of spot volume.

But “dominant” is not the same as “optimal.” For traders who want precision — limit orders, tight spreads, visible depth — AMMs feel blunt. And that’s the heart of today’s dilemma: CEX vs DEX. Centralized exchanges deliver the UX traders crave — instant feedback, predictable fills, professional liquidity — but they demand trust. DEXs give self-custody and transparency, but often at the cost of control and speed.

What if users didn’t have to choose? What if we could get CEX-like execution while staying non-custodial and transparent?

What is an OrderBook?

An order book is the oldest and still the most familiar way to trade. Open Binance, Coinbase, or even the New York Stock Exchange, and you’ll see the same picture: a rolling list of buyers (bids) on one side and sellers (asks) on the other. Every order is nothing more than two numbers: a price and a size.

The engine behind it is simple. Buyers compete to pay the lowest possible price, sellers compete to get the highest. Orders are ranked first by price and then by time. If two people want to buy ETH at $2,000, the one who clicked first gets priority. Whenever a buy and a sell line up, a trade happens. If there’s still leftover size, the order stays in the book, waiting for the next taker. This is how markets discover price — not by formula, but by negotiation in real time.

Example

ETH is hovering around $2,000. On the bid side, buyers line up: 10 ETH at $1,995, 5 ETH at $1,990. On the ask side, sellers offer: 7 ETH at $2,005, 12 ETH at $2,010. The tightest prices — $1,995 and $2,005 — are called the best bid and the best ask. The gap between them, $10, is the spread. If a trader comes in with a market order to buy 7 ETH, they’ll clear out the $2,005 ask, and the new best ask becomes $2,010. Just like that, the price has “moved.”

This is where order books shine. Traders can see the depth of the market, place orders exactly where they want, and anticipate where prices may stall or break through depending on where liquidity is stacked.

AMMs like Uniswap work differently. They don’t have a book; they have a curve. The formula x·y = k guarantees a quote, but it also means slippage: the larger your trade, the worse the price you get. You don’t know where liquidity lies ahead, and you can’t leave an order in the system and wait.

Order books, by contrast, give traders control and visibility. You choose your price. You avoid unnecessary slippage by waiting for the market to come to you. And you can read the dynamics of supply and demand directly in the book.

For professional market makers, this is their natural environment. They can quote both sides, manage spreads, and hedge inventory instantly. For active traders, it means strategy and transparency — you’re playing against other players, not against a formula.

That’s why every centralized exchange in the world runs on an order book. And that’s why, in DeFi, a true Ethereum-native order book has always been seen as the holy grail: it promises the precision and control of CEXs without sacrificing self-custody or transparency.

Long Way to CLOB

CLOB — Central Limit Order Book — is the classic structure behind modern exchanges.

Over the past year, the narrative around decentralized exchanges started to shift. Two developments in particular have made traders take the idea of an Ethereum-native order book seriously again.

First, the execution layer itself has matured. For years, the assumption was simple: order books don’t work on Ethereum, period. Too many updates, too much gas, too much latency. But fresh research in 2025 showed that the problem wasn’t unsolvable — it was structural. If validators simply maximize fees when picking transactions, the system breaks down, and efficiency plummets. The fix? Surprisingly straightforward: adjust block size and matching policies. When tuned correctly, order books can recover efficiency and even approach optimal conditions for some markets. Pair that with the latest Layer-2 scaling and clever data structures — like segment trees that keep order queues lean — and the once-impossible “order book on EVM” starts to look realistic.

Second, the industry is embracing pre-confirmation and near-instant settlement. Today, pre-signed adapter signatures and PTLCs are moving from theory into experimental stages. Recent whitepapers show concrete designs to reduce cross-chain swap times to ~15s using PTLCs; similarly, pre-confirmation proposals like Based Preconfirmations are being explored and prototyped for rollups/L2s with latencies in the hundreds of milliseconds. For market makers, that’s game-changing. An order book isn’t only about listing bids and asks — it’s about giving liquidity providers the confidence to hedge across venues without lag. If you can hedge in seconds, then an on-chain order book stops being a “slow version” of a CEX and starts becoming a credible alternative.

Together, these changes flip the script. For the first time, Ethereum-based order books feel technically and economically viable.

But that’s the point: these are still experiments. They signal where the industry might go, not what traders can rely on today. If you’re a liquidity provider or an active trader, you don’t want to wait for “maybe in a few years.” You want an order book that actually works now, inside Ethereum’s security model, with minimal integration friction, and without pulling liquidity into side ecosystems.

This is exactly what Vara.eth is designed for. Its architecture makes an Ethereum-native order book not just a long-term vision but a near-term possibility — technically achievable within Ethereum, with the performance and UX traders expect.

What is Vara.eth

Vara.eth is a decentralized execution engine built right next to Ethereum. Instead of creating its own blocks or running a separate ledger, it acts as a co-processor: validators run smart programs off-chain and then finalize the results directly on Ethereum. The outcome is simple — applications get the speed and flexibility they need, while users keep the security and transparency of Ethereum itself.

The design focuses on real-time, gas-abstracted dApps. Users only pay normal Ethereum gas to send a message, while programs fund their own execution in the background — removing friction and making fees predictable. Unlike rollups, Vara.eth has no sequencer and no global chain to bottleneck performance. Each application runs in its own queue, so workloads scale horizontally and execution feels instant, opening the door to experiences that were never possible on Ethereum before.

Why OrderBook on Vara.eth?

These capabilities are not just abstract. They open the door to use cases that DeFi has long struggled with — and the order book is perhaps the clearest example.

To bring order books fully on-chain in Ethereum, there are challenges that can’t be ignored. Matching thousands of resting orders, updating queues in real time, and giving traders fast feedback is heavy work for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. That’s why so many projects have gone outside the ecosystem. Aster and HyperLiquid, for example, showed that high-performance on-chain order books are possible — but only by building custom chains from scratch. dYdX v4 went even further, leaving Ethereum entirely and migrating to Cosmos in search of speed and control.

This trend shows the problem clearly: the demand for order books is real, but Ethereum hasn’t been able to host them natively. And that’s exactly the gap Vara.eth is built to fill. Vara.eth brings an Ethereum-native execution environment that can support order books without forcing projects to abandon Ethereum liquidity. Here’s why it matters:

It feels instant

When you place or take an order, you don’t sit waiting for a block to confirm. You see a pre-confirmation almost immediately: your order shows as filled, the depth chart updates, your PnL is visible. Later, Ethereum finalizes the same result, cryptographically secured. From a trader’s perspective, it feels no different from a CEX — but without giving up custody.

It doesn’t bleed gas

On Ethereum L1, every insert, cancel, or partial fill is its own costly transaction. Vara.eth flips that. The matching work is handled inside its execution layer and pushed back to Ethereum efficiently. Traders only pay the network fee to post a transaction, while all heavy computations — matching, queue management, execution — are covered by the program’s internal balance. The result is predictable costs, smoother UX, and even the ability to charge fees directly in the pair you’re trading — no juggling ETH just to place an order.

It scales horizontally

Order books thrive on constant micro-updates. Vara.eth handles this by giving each market its own queue, so busy pairs don’t slow down everything else. Multiple markets can run in parallel, heavy pairs can be throttled without bottlenecks, and scaling simply means spinning up more queues — not inventing a new chain.

It stays Ethereum-native

You keep using the tools you already know: MetaMask, explorers, analytics dashboards. Liquidity stays in Ethereum, no side-ecosystem, no bridges. Programs emit standard Ethereum events; wallets and dApps integrate seamlessly. It feels like trading anywhere else in DeFi — only faster and sharper.

It’s built for safety and fairness

There’s no sequencer deciding what goes first. Inputs are ordered transparently, and results are confirmed by a set of independent validators. Every update is either fully confirmed or not at all — no partial states, no gray zones. That means the pre-confirmations you see are guaranteed to match what lands on Ethereum later.

Where Vara.eth Fits Among Other Solutions

Different projects have tried to bring order books on-chain, each with its own compromises. dYdX v3 kept matching off-chain; v4 left Ethereum entirely for Cosmos. Serum on Solana proved high-speed order books are possible, but only inside one ecosystem. HyperLiquid built a custom chain from scratch to achieve performance. These experiments show two things: the appetite for order books is real, and the compromises are heavy.

Vara.eth takes a different path: it stays Ethereum-native. No separate chain, no fractured liquidity. Traders use the same wallets, the same liquidity pools, and settle directly under Ethereum’s security. For the first time, a full order book experience — fast, efficient, and fair — can live inside Ethereum itself

From Theory to Practice

Thanks to its uncompromising approach to Ethereum security and its unique execution model, Vara.eth demonstrates the readiness to support complex use cases such as a fully functional order book. In a forthcoming article, we will showcase this in practice.

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

Tokenator Is Now Live on Vara Network

Vara Network — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:24:06 GMT

Token creation on Vara just got a lot more accessible.

Tokenator is a new tool built for the Vara ecosystem — lets anyone launch a token through a clean, minimal interface without touching a single line of code. No custom contracts, no dev setup, no waiting. Just configure, deploy, and you’re done.

From zero to tradeable in minutes

The flow is intentionally short. Pick your token parameters, deploy through Tokenator, and your asset is live on Vara Network. From there, it can be listed on RiverDex, Vara’s native DEX, where liquidity can be added immediately.

That’s the full path — token creation, listing, and liquidity — without jumping between tools or piecing the process together manually.

Why it matters

Most teams don’t need a fully custom token contract. They need speed and clarity. Whether it’s a community token, an internal ecosystem asset, or a quick experiment — the ability to launch without friction is genuinely useful, especially in a fast-moving ecosystem where iteration matters.

Tokenator doesn’t try to replace complex setups. It handles the straightforward cases well, and that covers a lot of ground.

Try it now: tokenator.club

Join Vara Network and Start Building

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

Vara Monthly Recap | February 2026

Vara Network — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:29:13 GMT

February brought significant momentum with community campaigns, technical discussions across continents, and emerging projects demonstrating real-world applications of Vara’s infrastructure. The month showcased how builders are leveraging the network’s performance for everything from DeFi to AI-powered analytics and real-world business solutions.

Community Campaigns

Vara.eth “One of Us” Airlyft Campaign

The two-week Airlyft campaign launched on February 2nd, encouraging community members to experience “One of Us” — a simple counter demo showcasing instant pre-confirmations and gasless interactions on Vara.eth. The campaign attracted more than 1500 participants who tested the technology in real conditions and completed quests, demonstrating how Ethereum applications can deliver real-time responsiveness without compromising decentralization.

Projects Building on Vara

RivrDEX Testnet Milestones

RivrDEX shared impressive testnet results with over 20,000 transactions processed, including 15,000+ swaps, 6,000+ liquidity additions, and 1,000+ liquidity removals.

The platform published a bridge tutorial for moving test tokens from Ethereum to Vara Network.

GrowStreams V2 Launch

GrowStreams launched V2 with real-time token streaming, composable smart contracts for payroll, subscriptions, bounties, and grants. The launch generated 20,000+ impressions and 100+ new followers in two days.

Check out their launch video and follow for updates.

Ixchel Hub: AI-Driven Investment Intelligence

Ixchel Hub is building an AI-driven DApp that turns blockchain data into real-time, verifiable investment intelligence. AI agents monitor on-chain activity, analyze portfolios, detect risks, and generate explainable signals with full on-chain traceability.

Follow Ixchel Hub on Twitter to track their progress.

DavAi: Intelligent Operations for Physical Businesses

DavAi deploys AI agents to monitor and optimize operations in stores, restaurants, offices, and warehouses. The platform detects risky activity and triggers automated alerts, turning perception into prevention.

Follow their updates on Twitter.

EduGrants: Transparent Scholarship Ecosystems

EduGrants transforms scholarships into performance-based ecosystems using smart contracts, tokenized achievements, and NFT credentials. Students earn rewards for performance while sponsors get full on-chain traceability and real-time impact tracking.

Check their Twitter for details.

vStreet Hub: Lending & Borrowing Goes Live

vStreet Hub announced their Lending & Borrowing platform and $VST Vaults are now LIVE on testnet with their brand-new dApp interface on Vara Network. The expansion brings DeFi functionality to the platform, allowing users to test core features before mainnet deployment.

Try it now on testnet and follow their Twitter for updates.

Anvl Finance: Transforming Floor Plan Financing

Anvl Finance is transforming floor plan financing with a blockchain-powered platform built on Vara Network that uses AI agents to streamline operations. Tokenized governance ensures transparency and security as the platform redefines traditional finance structures in the automotive and equipment financing space.

Follow Anvl Finance on Twitter to learn more about their approach to combining AI and blockchain for real-world financial applications.

India: Vara.eth Discussion and Ecosystem Growth

Vara.eth AMA with Web3 Mumbai

Date: February 26th, 2026
Location: India (Online)
Speakers: Luis | Web3 Mumbai team
Collaboration: Web3 Mumbai

An AMA explored how Vara.eth is redefining what’s possible on Ethereum without leaving L1. The discussion covered real-time, parallel compute for Ethereum dApps with bridgeless architecture, intact liquidity, and Web2-grade UX. Luis shared insights about how developers can build highly scalable applications on Ethereum directly, leveraging Vara.eth’s performance advantages while maintaining full composability with the Ethereum ecosystem. The session attracted 645+ attendees and generated 1.5K impressions across social media posts.

Global Events and Technical Discussions

Nikolay Volf at Gate AMA

Date: February 12th, 2026
Location: Global (Online)
Speakers: Nikolay Volf (Founder)

Founder Nikolay Volf joined a two-part AMA organized by Gate, sharing insights about Vara.eth and discussing how speed and scalability can unlock the next wave of Web3 applications. The conversation covered technical architecture, developer opportunities, and the vision for bringing high-performance computation to Ethereum without fragmentation or liquidity splitting.

Listen to both parts to gain complete understanding of Vara.eth’s approach to scaling decentralized applications. (Part 1 & Part 2)

Vara at Consensus Hong Kong

Date: February 12th, 2026
Location: Hong Kong (In-Person)
Representatives: Alex (Co-founder) | Lishu (China Region Lead) | Andrei (Product Owner)

Consensus Hong Kong featured strong representation connecting with builders and partners throughout the conference. Attendees had the opportunity to meet directly and discuss Vara’s technology, ecosystem developments, and collaboration opportunities.

Vara at ETH Denver

Date: February 18–21, 2026
Location: Denver, Colorado (In-Person)
Representatives: Adam (US Region Lead)

ETHDenver 2026 brought together thousands of builders, researchers, and founders for one of the largest Ethereum developer gatherings in the world. Adam engaged with developers, infrastructure teams, and DeFi builders to showcase Vara.eth. Through technical discussions, networking events, and ecosystem meetings, connections were made with potential partners and developers interested in building high-performance decentralized applications.

Building Momentum Through Innovation

February demonstrated how technical capability translates into practical applications. From DeFi platforms processing thousands of testnet transactions to AI-powered analytics, intelligent business operations, scholarship systems, and innovative financial products — builders are discovering what becomes possible when performance constraints disappear.

Community engagement remained strong across India and global channels, with discussions attracting hundreds of participants exploring Vara.eth’s capabilities. As projects advance from testing to production, the ecosystem continues expanding with diverse use cases spanning finance, AI, education, and real-world operations.

Join Vara Network and Start Building

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

Welcome to the Family: Varan Wallet Is Live Inside Telegram

Vara Network — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:51:08 GMT

Great news for the Vara ecosystem — Varan Wallet has launched directly inside Telegram, bringing a self-custody Web3 wallet to one of the world’s most widely used messaging platforms. No extensions. No downloads. No setup. You open it, create your wallet, and you’re ready to go — all within a familiar interface.

Try it now on Telegram: @varanwalletbot

Built as a self-custody wallet, Varan Wallet gives users full control over their funds: your keys stay on your device, and you’re not relying on a centralized service to hold assets on your behalf.

In under 30 seconds, you can:

Open Varan Wallet in Telegram and generate a self-custody wallet
Send and receive assets across Vara Network, plus VARA, Ethereum, and TRON support
Store and manage NFTs alongside ecosystem tokens
Bridge assets between Vara and Ethereum via the Vara ⇌ Ethereum Bridge
Stake through protocol pools and start earning rewards

At launch, Varan Wallet supports all Vara-native assets, making it a simple, mobile-first hub for managing your portfolio and interacting with Vara’s on-chain economy.

And yes — you can play.

Varan Wallet includes Vara-based mini games like V-Starship, an arcade-style shooter where you destroy incoming enemies, level up, and earn PTS for daily activity. It’s quick, addictive, and built to turn engagement into points that can unlock future rewards.

Join Vara Network and Start Building

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

Vara Monthly Recap | January 2026

Vara Network — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:38:26 GMT

January 2026 started strong with new projects joining the ecosystem, technical innovations advancing developer capabilities, and the launch of verifiable gaming on mainnet. The month brought test applications, program expansion into new regions, and hands-on workshops strengthening the global community.

Major Milestones and Product Launches

RivrDEX Testnet Goes Live

RivrDEX officially launched their testnet on Vara Network, giving users the opportunity to test core functionality before mainnet. The platform chose Vara for its predictable execution, low fees, and congestion-free performance. Users can get test tokens via the Vara Bridge, connect their wallet, and share feedback to help shape the final product.

ZK Poker Launches on Mainnet

ZK Poker launched on Vara mainnet, transforming online poker with verifiable fairness. Players no longer need to trust the platform as the dealer — the game uses mental poker protocols and zero-knowledge proofs to keep cards private while proving shuffles and gameplay are fair without revealing the deck. This launch demonstrates how Vara’s architecture supports complex applications requiring both privacy and verifiability.

Ixchel Hub Announces Build on Vara Network

Ixchel Hub announced they are building their AI intelligence hub for crypto investors on Vara Network. The project focuses on on-chain analytics and tokenized assets, bringing faster markets and fewer bottlenecks for traders and investors. They chose Vara for its predictable execution, low fees, and congestion-free performance.

Vara.eth Application Launch: ONE OF US

Vara.eth launched “ONE OF US,” a simple test application demonstrating how the technology works through a minimal end-to-end flow. The application allows anyone to interact with and deploy their own version, providing a practical introduction to building on Vara.eth.

Latin America: Coordination and Adoption Strategies

The Silent Crisis of Coordination in Web3

Date: January 21st, 2026
Location: Latin America (Online)
Speakers: Michael | Illich

This AMA unpacked the hidden coordination problems inside Web3, exploring why good ideas get stuck and why communities struggle to move in the same direction. The Latam Ambassadors led a conversation about what needs to change for decentralized ecosystems to work at scale, focusing on DAOs, grants programs, and governance processes. Over 163 participants joined the discussion about the future of community-led projects and real on-chain governance.

Driving Adoption in Hispanic Communities

Date: January 28th, 2026
Location: Latin America (Online)
Speakers: Marysol | Zandor
Collaboration: Meta Pool DAO

A special session with Meta Pool DAO explored how both projects are driving adoption within Spanish-speaking communities. The teams shared real use cases, practical tools, and collaborative efforts focused on inclusion, financial access, and community participation in Web3. 205 participants joined to learn about practical pathways for bringing blockchain technology to underserged communities.

Empowering Spanish-Speaking Developers with Vara.eth Content

DevRel in LatAm, Adrian, developed a hands-on Vara.eth tutorial for the Spanish-speaking Vara community. The guide walks builders through how Vara.eth enables Ethereum-compatible experiences with instant pre-confirmations, gasless interactions, and seamless UX. It reflects an ongoing commitment to make advanced Web3 infrastructure more accessible, practical, and ready to adopt across regions and languages.

India: Technical Workshops and Ecosystem Building

Getting Started With Vara.eth

Date: January 9th, 2026
Location: India (Online)
Speaker: Aditya Kumar (DevRel)
Host: Adnan

Aditya Kumar, DevRel at Gear Foundation, led this session breaking down Vara’s Actor-Model architecture and the evolution from slow, expensive chains to high-performance systems. The workshop provided a deep dive into Vara.eth — the new application layer that lets developers run complex apps (Gaming, AI, HFT) using native ETH with zero bridging required. 78 developers joined to explore the technical advantages of building on Vara.

Vara.eth Workshop with Pune DAO

Date: January 23rd, 2026
Location: India (Online)
Speaker: Aditya Kumar
Host: Adnan
Collaboration: Pune DAO

The second Vara.eth workshop, held in collaboration with Pune DAO, continued the deep dive into Vara’s technical advantages and parallel processing benefits. The session attracted newcomers seeking clear introductions to decentralized apps, degens looking for technical edges, and builders ready to leverage Ethereum’s liquidity with Vara’s speed. 94 participants joined the conversation.

RWAs: The Narrative That Will Break the Internet This Cycle

This AMA explored the growth and future potential of Real World Assets in the current cycle. Representatives from Vara Network, Lucknow DAO, and Builder Base discussed how RWAs are transforming the blockchain landscape and gaining momentum across the industry. 157 participants joined to understand practical applications and investment opportunities in tokenization.

PolyBasket: Prediction Market Innovation

Date: January 23rd, 2026
Location: India

PolyBasket launched as a prediction market aggregator built on Vara Network that lets users bundle multiple Polymarket outcomes into one basket and bet as a single position. Since launch, the platform has processed 221+ messages, created 54 baskets across politics, tech, crypto, and entertainment, settled payouts of more than 300k in TVARA, and attracted 75+ unique users. Check the detailed video.

China: Building at Hacker House Shenzhen

Dot Your Future Hacker House

Date: January 9–11, 2026
Location: Shenzhen, China (In-Person)
Speaker: Hangbiao
Host: OneBlock+

The Dot Your Future Hacker House, hosted by OneBlock+ and Polkadot, concluded successfully in Shenzhen. The event received 65 registrations, with 21 developers passing the review process. They formed 12 teams, all of which successfully completed their projects and demos.

This was a full-cycle, real project incubation journey rather than a typical hackathon. Vara was invited to hold a featured workshop on building with Vara.eth, introducing developers to Vara’s technical architecture and practical applications for building on top of Ethereum.

United States: Technical Networking and Systems Development

Vara Rust Meetup

Date: January 20th, 2026
Location: United States (In-Person)
Host: Adam
Collaboration: Rust Community Group

The monthly public Rust meetup brought together developers for technical discussions and networking. The event focused on low-level systems development and protocol-level innovation. Engineers gathered to exchange ideas about modular smart contracts, experimental runtime design, and share experiments with Rust in the Web3 context.

Global Engagement and Technical Discussions

RivrDEX AMA

Date: January 5th, 2026
Location: Vara Twitter (Online)
Speakers: Luis (CGO, Gear Foundation) | Keepositive (CEO, RivrDEX)

An AMA explored how RivrDEX is redefining trading performance on Vara Network’s infrastructure. The conversation covered next-generation trading features, technical architecture, and what RivrDEX brings to the ecosystem, giving the community insight into the platform ahead of its testnet launch.

DEV🕶️TIME: AI-Powered Development

Date: January 29th, 2026
Location: Vara Twitter (Online)
Speakers: Dima (CTO) | Vadim (Core dev) | Claire (Head of Community growth)

The first DEV🕶️TIME session of 2026 explored how AI tools like Claude are transforming blockchain development and lowering barriers for builders entering the Web3 space. The discussion covered practical applications of AI in smart contract development, debugging workflows, and how these tools are reshaping the developer experience. Developers shared real-world examples of using AI to accelerate development cycles and improve code quality.

Building Momentum Through Community

January demonstrated how technical innovation and community engagement move forward together. From product launches and testnet deployments to program expansion into new regions, the month showcased commitment to both cutting-edge technology and grassroots community building.

Technical workshops, community discussions, and developer meetups across continents kept builders connected and knowledge flowing. As the network moves forward, the momentum continues with projects advancing from testnet to mainnet and communities worldwide collaborating to build the next generation of decentralized applications.

Join Vara Network and Start Building

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

Real DeFI: Build HyperLiquid on Ethereum with Vara.eth

Vara Network — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 10:17:47 GMT

“My introduction to HyperLiquid took less than a minute. A wallet was generated automatically.

I deposited USDC via Arbitrum in a few clicks, and within seconds I was trading. There was no KYC, no network switching, and no additional setup. And yet, everything was fully on-chain.”

Eugene Way (Growth Tech Lead at Gear Foundation)

In this article, we explore a thought experiment with real technical grounding: Can we recreate the core architecture and performance of HyperLiquid — not on a custom L1 — but directly on Ethereum using Vara.eth?

The answer is yes.

HyperLiquid isn’t just another DeFi protocol. It’s a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain, optimized entirely for on-chain trading — not general-purpose computation. In a world of fragmented rollups and gas-heavy experiences, HyperLiquid offers something shockingly close to CEX-level performance — but without the custody.

“HyperLiquid is the first chain where trading just works — no wallets, no gas, no lag. It feels like Binance, but it’s fully transparent,” — wrote one trader on Twitter.

Launched literally in silence, HyperLiquid has quietly become one of the most active trading platforms on-chain, with daily volumes averaging $6–8 billion and a rapidly growing base of active traders. According to recent analytics, it has even outpaced dYdX and Aevo in certain daily metrics, including active wallets and trade count. The protocol achieved $2.95 trillion in total trading volume throughout 2025, demonstrating remarkable growth momentum..

So what makes the HyperLiquid case so unique?

Let’s be honest. Traditional DeFi is structurally limited. It’s often slow, overly technical, and hard to navigate — even for experienced crypto users. For most users outside of Web3, DeFi remains a confusing, intimidating space — filled with unfamiliar interfaces, liquidity pools, staking strategies, and gas fees.

The HyperLiquid team realized the biggest barrier to mass adoption wasn’t lack of functionality — but excessive friction. They didn’t try to generalize; they focused on a specific use case: real-time, on-chain trading — and optimized everything around it.

As a result, it integrates several fundamental innovations:

Onchain Order Book
Real Time UI
Zero gas trading
Sub-second Finality
Broad Liquidity access

Thought Experiment: What if we build HyperLiquid on Ethereum?

HyperLiquid is impressive — but it’s not magic. Its performance is the result of careful engineering and a highly focused protocol design. What if we could build HyperLiquid — not on a separate chain — but natively within Ethereum itself?

But here’s the catch: you can’t replicate HyperLiquid’s experience on Ethereum using standard tooling. The EVM wasn’t built for ultra-low-latency trading, instant UI updates, or gas-free interaction. Every smart contract call in EVM carries computational overhead, cost, and latency.

Surprisingly, the answer may be closer than it seems.

Enter Vara.eth: A New Execution Environment for Ethereum

Vara.eth (formerly known as Gear.exe) is a technology that reimagines how logic can be executed inside Ethereum. Unlike rollups or typical Layer 2 solutions, Vara.eth is not a vertical extension of Ethereum — it runs alongside it. By doing so, it avoids the fragmentation dilemma.

“Wondering why fragmentation on Ethereum is such a big deal? Learn how Vara.eth deals with it.”

In short, Vara.eth allows developers to run WASM smart contracts directly on Ethereum, with full compatibility with existing Ethereum contracts, native ETH token, and standard tooling (MetaMask, Etherscan).

On top of that, Vara.eth brings a modern stack of features that empower developers to create next-gen dApps — like HyperLiquid and beyond.

Feature-by-Feature

Let’s take a closer look at how Vara.eth can replicate each of its core features — and in some cases, go even further.

Onchain Order Book

No serious CEX-trading experience can exist without a native order book. Liquidity, precision, and speed all depend on how orders are placed, matched, and settled — and doing this on-chain ensures full transparency and auditability.

In HyperLiquid, the order book is implemented directly at the execution engine level, embedded into the node logic itself. Every trade, every match, and every cancellation is processed as a native protocol instruction — not as a smart contract call.

On Vara.eth, the same functionality is implemented through dedicated WASM programs, one per trading pair. Vara.eth compensates that by offering a powerful execution environment, designed for high-speed performance:

Programs execute in parallel by default;
WebAssembly ensures fast, low-level execution;
Modular scaling.

On HyperLiquid the matching engine, parameters, and fee models are hardcoded into the execution engine and cannot be easily modified (if we are talking about a fully decentralized system). Vara.eth enables on-chain order books that are modular and scalable.

Real-Time UI

One of the most impressive breakthroughs HyperLiquid brings to on-chain trading is its Real-Time UI — the ability to reflect the outcome of a user action instantly, even before the blockchain has finalized the transaction.

This is something no existing DeFi platform has achieved at this scale.

On most dApps today, users are forced to wait 10 to 30 seconds — sometimes longer — just to see whether their transaction succeeded. Until the block is finalized, the interface remains uncertain: there’s no feedback, no updated balance, no open position. For core use cases like high-frequency trading or market making, this delay is not just inconvenient — it’s a dealbreaker.

Fortunately, Vara.eth enables this same real-time experience inside Ethereum.

Thanks to its support for pre-confirmation mechanics, Vara.eth allows applications to reflect state changes immediately after user interaction, without waiting for final settlement. For DeFi, this means every trade — whether limit, market, or swap — can appear instantly in the UI, just like on centralized exchanges.

But the implications go far beyond trading.

Now, any Ethereum application can deliver a real-time user experience — from interactive games to governance dashboards, social platforms, and beyond.

Zero-Gas UX

Gasless user experience isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity for mass adoption, especially in trading.

Let’s be honest: few things in DeFi are more frustrating than having to find and approve the right token just to pay for gas, before you can even swap your assets or open a position.

It’s far more intuitive — and user-friendly — to simply pay a fee in the asset you’re already trading.

Instead of requiring users to pay gas in ETH, Vara.eth enables applications to sponsor execution using their internal balance, while charging users only for submitting the transaction itself.

When combined with the pre-confirmation mechanism, this unlocks a powerful user flow: even users with an entirely empty wallet can interact with applications — trading, swapping, or performing any other action instantly and without friction.

Applications, in turn, gain the freedom to define their own service fee models, charging in any token and designing custom economic logic around their product. In other words, apps can fully abstract away gas — and monetize based on value delivered, not transactions executed.

This architecture replicates the seamless UX offered by HyperLiquid — and extends the same model to all Ethereum-native use cases, far beyond just trading.

Liquidity Accessibility

HyperLiquid sources liquidity primarily through a bridge to Arbitrum, which acts as the main gateway for deposits and withdrawals — especially for USDC. To support a broader range of assets (over 30 at the time of writing), it integrates with protocols like deBridge, enabling users to transfer tokens from various ecosystems, including Solana, Bitcoin, and Avalanche.

But bridging comes with trade-offs.

From a user perspective, bridging often means switching networks, waiting for finality, and dealing with wrapped tokens. It also adds risk: bridges have become one of the most targeted components in DeFi, with more than $2 billion lost to hacks to date.

Vara.eth takes a different approach.

By executing directly on Ethereum mainnet, Vara-based applications have native access to all ERC-20 tokens — without external bridges, extra infrastructure, or custom networks. Everything runs on-chain, using standard smart contract logic.

Even better, Vara.eth contracts can interact directly with other Ethereum protocols, unlocking instant access to deep liquidity on platforms like Uniswap, Aave, Curve, and Balancer. That means Vara.eth apps aren’t isolated — they’re plugged into the Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem.

Finality

Vara.eth relies on Ethereum’s native finality, which typically occurs around 12 seconds after block inclusion.

HyperLiquid, by contrast, achieves ~1-second finality through tightly integrated execution logic, a minimal validator set (16 nodes), and the absence of a general-purpose virtual machine — all contributing to rapid block propagation and confirmation.

Fast finality is certainly desirable — as it reduces uncertainty and improves execution confidence. But for well over 95% of real-world use cases, including most DeFi interactions, Ethereum’s 12-second finality is more than sufficient.

In practice, finality is not the same as user experience. What users care about is responsiveness — and Vara-based applications can match that, delivering real-time UX on top of Ethereum’s secure and decentralized consensus.

So in the context of building something like HyperLiquid on Ethereum, finality is not a blocker — it’s simply part of the design landscape.

The Dark Side of HyperLiquid

The HyperLiquid team has delivered one of the most modern and responsive on-chain trading experiences to date — proving that CEX-level performance can, in fact, be achieved in a blockchain-native environment.

But as the protocol has grown in popularity, it has also faced criticism from the crypto community — especially regarding centralization and transparency.

HyperLiquid is a design-focused solution, purpose-built to optimize for speed and user experience in trading.

To achieve that, the team sacrificed certain decentralization principles — in exchange for performance and control over the user experience:

A closed validator set (currently 16 nodes, hand-picked by the Foundation);
Hardcoded execution logic built into the protocol runtime;
Centralized control over token listings, upgrades, liquidity pools;
A non-public codebase.

“Most people don’t care now because it works. But we’ve seen this story before. UX-first chains often pay the decentralization bill later. — say some X user”

Still, it’s worth recalling the recent JELLY incident, where validators had to manually override the token’s oracle price to prevent a wider liquidation cascade. This choice is not necessarily bad — it simply highlights the centralized governance mechanisms that remain part of HyperLiquid’s current design.

This is where Vara.eth offers a fundamentally different model.

Vara.eth is a permissionless execution environment, fully integrated into Ethereum.

It enables developers to deploy custom logic as WASM-based smart contracts, with full on-chain transparency, auditability, and modularity.

Side-by-Side

Now that we’ve gone through each core feature in detail, let’s bring it all together.

The table below summarizes the key architectural and UX elements of HyperLiquid compared to possible implementations using Vara.eth on Ethereum.

Feature Coverage and Beyond

Thanks to solutions like Vara.eth, experiences once thought exclusive to custom Layer 1s — like HyperLiquid’s real-time, gasless trading — are now achievable directly on Ethereum. And not just replicated — but expanded.

Vara.eth isn’t built around a single product model. Its general-purpose architecture, modular execution, and flexible logic design allow developers to go far beyond traditional DeFi patterns — without giving up composability, upgradability, or Ethereum-native interoperability.

Crucially Vara.eth also unlocks access to high-performance on-chain computation. That includes workloads traditionally considered out of reach for Ethereum — such as complex trading logic, real-time simulations, or even AI-powered decision-making. All processed directly on-chain, without external infrastructure or custom networks.

This unlocks far more than trading.

It opens the door to a new wave of decentralized applications — dynamic, scalable, and deeply integrated into Ethereum’s liquidity and tooling stack. From real-time financial platforms to complex video games or interactive on-chain systems — the possibilities are rapidly expanding.

In the next article, we’ll dive into the practical side: how to build a HyperLiquid-style experience using Vara.eth on Ethereum — and what new capabilities it makes possible.

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

One of Us: Powering Up Ethereum Applications

Vara Network — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:02:25 GMT

Don’t wait — try it now

Web3 apps trained us to accept the same ritual every time: wait a block, then wait for finality. Click, sign, refresh, hope. With “One of Us”, we’re flipping that expectation on its head — using a simple counter demo to show what Ethereum apps look like when “waiting” stops being part of the product.

This launch is part of a hands-on Airlyft campaign — a quick way to try the tech in real conditions, complete quests. Under the hood, the demo is built on Vara.eth, an application platform that extends Ethereum with a fast compute layer — without bridges and without liquidity fragmentation. It’s designed for real-time responsiveness: execution can return results immediately via pre-confirmations, while canonical settlement remains anchored to Ethereum finality.

What is Vara.eth?

Vara.eth is a high-performance application platform built directly into Ethereum. What does “directly into” actually mean? The key idea: Solidity contracts stay exactly where they are — holding assets, defining permissions, preserving full composability. But instead of carrying all application logic, EVM contracts become the gateway. Compute-heavy logic moves beyond the EVM, written in Rust, compiled to WASM, executed off-chain by a decentralized validator network.

Results return to Ethereum and apply through the same contracts. This dual structure keeps Ethereum as the anchor for security and settlement, while extending it with a dedicated compute layer designed for parallel execution and real workloads. And because execution doesn’t wait for on-chain finality, applications return results almost immediately via pre-confirmations, of course with full Ethereum finality following as usual.

And that’s the magic trick: your UI doesn’t have to stall. Pre-confirmations let the app show an outcome right after execution, even before the transaction is finalized on-chain — a direct bridge between crypto-grade settlement and Web2-grade UX. It’s a small demo on purpose, because the point is big: Ethereum applications won’t feel the same after this.

And it’s not just about speed — it’s about trust. Pre-confirmations are cryptographically signed by validators who stake real collateral. Misbehave? Get slashed. You get instant feedback with economic security baked in, and when finality hits Ethereum L1 seconds later, you get the full guarantee of Ethereum consensus itself.

And yes — you can try it with zero ETH in your wallet. Vara.eth supports a reverse gas model, where the app covers execution costs from its own balance. For this demo, you literally need nothing. No gas, no friction. Users interact through the familiar Ethereum flow, but the product experience is finally instant.

Try it on Airlyft: open the quest, connect your wallet, hit Join — you’ll see the result instantly (that’s pre-confirmation) and settlement follows on Ethereum shortly after.

This is what Ethereum apps should have felt like from day one.

_________________________________________________________________

Airyft Campaign — https://airlyft.one/vara-network/varaeth-one-of-us

One of us App — https://eth.vara.network/one-of-us

Vara.eth Overview — https://eth.vara.network/

Start with Vara — https://start.vara.network/

To join the community and headline Ethereum ecosystem revolution use the links below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

RivrDEX Testnet is Now Live on Vara Network

Vara Network — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:16:51 GMT

RivrDEX, an AMM-based decentralized exchange, has launched their test DEX on Vara Network testnet. This is an important milestone for the Vara ecosystem as RivrDEX moves closer to mainnet deployment.

What is RivrDEX?

RivrDEX is an automated market maker (AMM) decentralized exchange built on Vara Network. Leveraging Vara’s 3-second block finality and sub-second confirmation times, RivrDEX delivers a fast, efficient trading experience with features including:

Token swaps with 0.3% trading fees
Liquidity provision and LP rewards
Seamless asset bridging
Comprehensive transaction history
Pool incentives for liquidity providers

Why Testnet Matters

The testnet phase is crucial for any serious DeFi project. It allows users to explore full platform functionality in a risk-free environment using test tokens with no real value. This approach enables the RivrDEX team to identify and fix potential issues before mainnet, ensuring a polished, reliable product at launch.

For users, testnet is an opportunity to familiarize yourself with RivrDEX’s interface and features, provide valuable feedback that shapes the final product, and participate in exclusive campaigns designed for early adopters.

Testnet Campaigns & Quests

To reward meaningful participation, RivrDEX has launched their first testnet campaign featuring quests on Guild and Galxe.

How it works:

Start with the Guild quest to earn the Tester role in RivrDEX Discord
Complete the Galxe quest to earn points for the leaderboard
Enter the $USDT raffle for active participants

Early participants will secure better positions on the Galxe leaderboard, making this a great opportunity to be among the first active users.

How to Join RivrDEX Testnet

Getting started is straightforward:

Get test tokens via the Vara Bridge
Connect your wallet
Switch to testnet mode
Go to “My Tokens” tab
Select the token you need, complete the captcha, and receive tokens
Visit RivrDEX and connect your wallet
Explore the platform:

Swap tokens
Provide liquidity
Use the bridge
Review transaction history

Share Your Feedback

The RivrDEX team is actively seeking community input during the testnet phase. User feedback directly influences what RivrDEX becomes on mainnet. Share your experience, report bugs, and suggest improvements in:

This collaborative approach helps build better products for the entire Vara ecosystem.

Join the Vara Ecosystem

The RivrDEX testnet launch represents another step forward for DeFi on Vara Network. This is your opportunity to experience next-generation decentralized trading built on Vara’s fast, efficient infrastructure.

Start testing RivrDEX today: rivrdex.io

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol

A New Format for a Legendary Game: ZK Poker Is Live

Vara Network — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:42:24 GMT

Poker isn’t a trend. It’s a classic equal parts psychology, probability, and nerve. People have been playing it for generations, and they’ll keep playing it for generations after. The game is simple to learn and impossible to master, which is exactly why it survives every format and every era.

Online poker made it global, but it also quietly changed what you’re agreeing to. You’re not only playing opponents — you’re trusting the platform: the shuffle, the dealing logic, the privacy of your hand, and the integrity of the table. And once real value enters the chat, “trust us” stops being a satisfying security model.

That’s why poker is such a natural fit for Web3. Not because it needs tokens, but because it needs verifiable fairness. We rebuilt online poker in an Web3 format — multiplayer, math-enforced, message-driven — using mental poker and zero-knowledge verification, so the platform doesn’t get to be the trusted dealer anymore.

You can try it today on mainnet: Play the Mental Poker DApp.

How We Built It

Under the hood, this only works because several pieces finally line up. Mental poker needs modern cryptography — elliptic-curve encryption to keep cards private and zero-knowledge proofs to make shuffles and decryptions verifiable without revealing the deck. But it also needs a runtime that can host a real multiplayer game without turning every move into a bottleneck.

That’s where Vara fits naturally. Vara is a WASM-based network built around the actor model, so a poker table can live as an isolated program with its own state and lifecycle, while many tables run in parallel without fighting over shared execution. Verification is treated as a first-class concern: instead of bloating the game logic with heavy cryptographic routines, the system can rely on dedicated verification components and Vara’s built-in mechanisms for optimized crypto primitives when needed. The practical result is simple: private operations stay with the players on the client, while the chain enforces the game phases and checks cryptographic correctness — so fairness comes from verification, not from trusting an operator.

Not a reader? Just play. But if you want to see exactly how it works, the deep dive is public and detailed — everything is linked and explained.

Deep dive link

Join Vara Network and Start Building

Would you like to become part of the community? Explore and join using the social channels below:

Vara

Gear Protocol