GMX

GMX is a decentralized perpetual exchange that lets traders open leveraged positions on crypto assets directly from their wallets, without depositing funds to a centralized custodian. Launched on Arbitrum in September 2021 and expanded to Avalanche in early 2022, the protocol has since grown into a multichain infrastructure spanning Solana, Base, Botanix, BNB Chain, and Ethereum mainnet. By mid-2026, GMX had facilitated over $345 billion in cumulative trading volume across more than 735,000 traders, generating $460 million in lifetime fees.

How GMX Works

GMX operates through two distinct protocol generations, each with a different liquidity architecture.

V1: the GLP model. The original design used a single, shared multi-asset pool called GLP. Liquidity providers deposited a basket of assets — BTC, ETH, stablecoins, and select altcoins — and received GLP tokens representing their share. Traders borrowed against this pool to take leveraged positions, with the pool acting as the counterparty to all trades. Price feeds came from Chainlink oracles, allowing GMX to execute trades at oracle price with no slippage on the trader side. The fee split under V1 directed 70% of fees to GLP holders and 30% to GMX stakers, paid in ETH on Arbitrum or AVAX on Avalanche.

V2: isolated GM pools. GMX V2 replaced the monolithic GLP pool with a market-specific architecture. Each trading pair — say BTC/USDC or ETH/USDC — gets its own isolated GM (GMX Market) pool. This design limits contagion risk: a position that goes wrong in one market cannot drain liquidity intended for another. Liquidity providers choose their exposure by selecting individual pools rather than holding a blended basket. V2 also introduced GLV vaults, which are multi-asset vault tokens that dynamically shift their allocation across the highest-performing GM markets, giving liquidity providers optimized yield without manually managing pool positions.

Token Model

GMX's governance and value-capture token is GMX itself, with a hard supply cap of approximately 13.25 million tokens and around 10.42 million in circulation as of mid-2026. Stakers receive 30% of protocol fees in native chain tokens (ETH, AVAX) plus esGMX (escrowed GMX), which vests over one year and aligns long-term incentives. GLP tokens represent V1 liquidity positions; GM and GLV tokens represent V2 positions.

Multichain Expansion

GMX's multichain strategy launched publicly in September 2025, with Base as the first new chain. The protocol uses LayerZero for cross-chain interoperability — the same infrastructure that has processed over 150 million cross-chain messages and supported more than $120 billion in volume — to create a unified trading experience regardless of which network holds a user's funds.

The resulting product, GMX Express, abstracts away bridging entirely. Traders can onboard in under 30 seconds, pay gas in USDC, USDT, or ETH, and execute trades in under one second across all supported networks. A single GMX Account ties positions and balances across chains together, removing the fragmentation that typically burdens multichain DeFi.

Ethereum mainnet was added on December 22, 2025, making it possible to trade from EVM wallets on mainnet without bridging collateral to Arbitrum first. The Ethereum integration offers BTC/USDC and ETH/USDC GM pools alongside GLV vaults, with single-token pools flagged as an upcoming addition.

Solana was targeted through a separate deployment that launched on Solana mainnet on March 12, 2025, initially branded GMXSOL before being rebranded GMTrade in November 2025 as the team positioned it as its own standalone product built on the GMX V2 architecture. GMTrade adapted the isolated GM pool model for Solana's parallel execution environment and introduced a trade-to-mint mechanic where traders earn GT points based on fees paid, redeemable for stablecoins from the treasury. By the time of the rebranding, GMTrade had accumulated $2.4 billion in volume and established itself as the third-largest perp DEX on Solana.

Trading Capabilities

Across the full multichain deployment, traders access 90+ perpetual markets and 23 spot swap markets. Maximum leverage reaches approximately 50x. Markets cover BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, DOGE, and dozens of other assets. The oracle-based pricing model, sourced from Chainlink, means traders face no price impact on order entry — a meaningful advantage for large position sizes where slippage on order-book DEXs compounds cost.

Arbitrum remains the core of GMX's liquidity, accounting for approximately 94% of total TVL. The remaining TVL is spread across Avalanche, Solana, and the newer deployments.

The July 2025 Security Incident

On July 9, 2025, GMX V1 on Arbitrum was exploited through a cross-contract re-entrancy vulnerability in the position accounting system. The attacker manipulated GLP token price mid-transaction, briefly inflating it from roughly $1.45 to $27, and extracted approximately $42 million. The GMX team coordinated with the attacker, who returned approximately $40.5 million in exchange for a 10% white-hat bounty. Only V1 was affected; V2 pools and all other chains remained uncompromised. The incident accelerated the community's migration posture toward V2's isolated pool architecture, which eliminates the single shared-pool attack surface.

Competitive Position

GMX operates in a crowded field of on-chain perpetuals. As of mid-2026, Hyperliquid leads in 30-day volume at approximately $245 billion versus GMX's $2.8 billion, reflecting Hyperliquid's rise as the dominant venue for high-frequency perp trading. GMX's differentiation rests on its multichain reach, its oracle-based zero-slippage execution, the yield-generating properties of GM and GLV pools for liquidity providers, and the established $460 million in lifetime fees as evidence of protocol revenue durability.

The protocol is community-governed, with GMX stakers voting on parameter changes and treasury allocations. The multichain infrastructure, the ongoing Solana expansion under GMTrade, and the December 2025 Ethereum mainnet integration are all outcomes of community governance decisions and contributor proposals.