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What Is GMX?

GMX (ticker GMX) is a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures and spot trading. Instead of matching buyers and sellers in an order book, GMX lets traders open leveraged long or short positions directly against pools of liquidity, with prices set by oracles rather than by the trades themselves. This design gives traders zero price impact even on large positions, while liquidity providers earn the fees that traders pay. GMX launched on the Arbitrum network in September 2021, expanded to Avalanche in early 2022, and has since grown into one of the most widely used perpetuals platforms in DeFi, with hundreds of billions of dollars in cumulative trading volume.

GMX was built by an anonymous team led by a developer known by the pseudonym "X". Before GMX, the same team launched two earlier projects: XVIX, an experimental token on Ethereum, and Gambit, a trading protocol on BNB Chain (then Binance Smart Chain). When GMX launched, holders of the XVIX and Gambit tokens migrated their holdings into GMX, which is why a large share of the initial supply was reserved for that migration. The protocol is governed by the GMX DAO, where GMX holders vote on proposals.

The first version of the protocol, GMX V1, pooled all liquidity into a single index token called GLP, a basket of assets such as ETH, BTC, and stablecoins. Traders' profits were paid out of the GLP pool and their losses flowed into it, so GLP holders were effectively the counterparty to every trade. GMX V2 replaced this with isolated GM pools, where each market has its own liquidity and liquidity providers choose exactly which markets they are exposed to, and GLV vaults, which automatically spread deposits across multiple GM pools to chase the best utilization. V2 also introduced funding fees and a price impact mechanism to balance long and short open interest, addressing weaknesses in the V1 design.

The GMX token has a forecasted maximum supply of 13.25 million, and minting beyond that cap would require a governance vote. The token's central feature is fee sharing: a portion of the fees generated by leverage trading, swaps, borrowing, and liquidations (currently 27 percent) is used to buy back GMX on the open market under a DAO-approved mechanism, linking the token's value to protocol usage. Stakers have historically also received escrowed GMX (esGMX), a vesting reward token, as an additional incentive. GMX can be staked on Arbitrum and Avalanche.

GMX's history includes two incidents that anyone evaluating the protocol should know about. In September 2022, a trader exploited the zero-price-impact design on Avalanche by manipulating the price of AVAX on other exchanges while opening large positions on GMX, extracting roughly $565,000 from GLP liquidity providers across repeated cycles. GMX responded by capping open interest on the AVAX market, and V2's price impact mechanism was designed in part to close this class of attack.

Far more serious was the July 2025 exploit of GMX V1 on Arbitrum. An attacker used a reentrancy vulnerability to manipulate the vault's accounting and the pricing of GLP, draining roughly $42 million. GMX halted V1 trading and GLP minting and redeeming, and offered the attacker a 10 percent white-hat bounty. The attacker accepted, returning the funds and keeping about $5 million as the bounty. GMX then fully reimbursed affected GLP holders, distributing around $44 million by August 2025. GMX V2, which held the large majority of activity, was not affected; V1 and GLP have since been deprecated, and all trading now runs on V2.

Today GMX is a multichain protocol. Beyond its original Arbitrum and Avalanche deployments, GMX launched on Solana in early 2025, and a multichain expansion built with LayerZero lets users trade and provide liquidity from chains including Ethereum mainnet, Base, and BNB Chain. The GM and GLV liquidity tokens can be bought and held across these networks while still earning fees from the underlying markets.

Getting Started With GMX

Getting started with GMX usually means trading on the exchange, providing liquidity, or holding and staking the GMX token:

  1. Step 1: Set up a wallet that supports Arbitrum or Avalanche, such as MetaMask or Rabby, and fund it with ETH or AVAX for gas.
  2. Step 2: Visit the GMX app and connect your wallet to trade spot or perpetuals, with leverage available on supported markets.
  3. Step 3: To earn fees as a liquidity provider, deposit into a GM pool for a specific market or a GLV vault that spreads deposits across several pools.
  4. Step 4: To participate in the protocol's fee sharing and governance, acquire GMX tokens and stake them on Arbitrum or Avalanche.

How to Get a GMX Wallet?

GMX is an ERC-20 style token that lives on Arbitrum and Avalanche (with a Solana deployment as well), so any wallet that supports those networks can hold it.

MetaMask

MetaMask is the most widely used EVM wallet, available as a browser extension and mobile app. It supports Arbitrum and Avalanche, and connects directly to the GMX app for trading, providing liquidity, and staking.

Rabby

Rabby is a browser-extension wallet designed for multichain DeFi use. It automatically switches between networks like Arbitrum and Avalanche and previews transaction outcomes before you sign, which is useful when interacting with a leveraged trading protocol.

Hardware Wallets

A Ledger or Trezor device can be paired with MetaMask or Rabby to keep your private keys offline, which is recommended for larger GMX holdings and long-term staking positions.

GMX Resources

How to Buy GMX?

GMX is available on both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

Centralized Exchanges

GMX is listed on major exchanges including Binance, Kraken, Bybit, KuCoin, and Gate, typically traded against USD or USDT.

Decentralized Exchanges

On-chain, GMX can be swapped on Uniswap on Arbitrum and on Avalanche DEXes such as Trader Joe (now LFJ). The GMX app itself also offers spot swaps against its own liquidity pools, and the token can be bridged between Arbitrum and Avalanche.

Latest GMX News

GMX's recent history has been defined by recovery and expansion. After the July 2025 V1 exploit, the protocol recovered the stolen funds through a white-hat bounty arrangement, reimbursed GLP holders in full, and retired V1 entirely, consolidating all activity on the risk-isolated V2 architecture. Since then the focus has been multichain growth: a Solana deployment, LayerZero-powered access from Ethereum, Base, and BNB Chain, and making the GM and GLV liquidity tokens portable across networks.

Ongoing development centers on reducing trading costs and friction, with upgrades such as gasless transactions, cross-collateral support, and refinements to the price impact mechanism. Because fee parameters, supported chains, and staking mechanics change through DAO governance, the official documentation and governance forum are the best sources for the current state of the protocol.