A decentralized exchange where you trade crypto, including leveraged 'perpetual' bets of up to 100x, directly from your own wallet. No company holds your coins, so the trading is non-custodial. It runs as smart contracts on Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Ethereum.

Is GMX its own blockchain?

No. GMX is a protocol, a set of smart contracts, deployed on top of chains that already exist: Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Ethereum mainnet. The GMX token itself is an ERC-20 utility and governance token, not the coin of its own chain.

An anonymous team. The lead developer is reported to be the pseudonymous @xdev_10, but that identity is unverified. The same team had earlier shipped a perp DEX called Gambit on BNB Chain, and GMX grew out of that work, launching on Arbitrum in September 2021.

How many GMX tokens are there?

The forecasted maximum is 13.25 million GMX, but that is not a hard cap, minting beyond it needs a holder governance vote. Around 10.4 million are in circulation. That is far smaller and tighter than Bitcoin's fixed 21 million, yet still adjustable.

Does staking GMX still pay rewards?

Staking normally earns a share of protocol fees, but per the official docs those rewards are currently suspended (2026). Instead the protocol uses about 27% of fees to buy back GMX, and that GMX builds up in the Treasury until the token reaches $90. This is a time-sensitive policy that may change.

No.182

📒 Codex Mcap · Perp DEX

GMX GMX

the table that deals the bets but never holds your chips

🎭 A hooded croupier with no face and no vault, running a leverage floor on lands he does not own

📜 Smart Contract

ALTROOKIE CODEX

💬 “Step up to the table. I deal the bets, I keep the fees, but I never take your coins, they stay in your wallet the whole time. I do not even have a face for you to trust. The contract is the only thing you shake hands with.”

💬 TL;DR

What: a decentralized exchange for spot trades and leveraged 'perpetual' bets up to 100x, run from your own wallet.
Where: not its own chain, it's a smart-contract protocol living on Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Ethereum.
Who: an anonymous team, grown out of their earlier 'Gambit' perp DEX. The GMX token is for fees and governance votes.
Supply: forecast max ~13.25M (not a hard cap, governance can change it), far tighter than most coins.

📖 The Story

September 2021. A new trading floor opened on Arbitrum, a Layer 2 network sitting on top of Ethereum. There was no company sign over the door and no face behind the desk. GMX trading went live on September 6, and from the start the deal was unusual: you could place leveraged bets, but your coins never left your wallet. The croupier dealt the cards and took a cut of every hand, yet held nothing of yours.

The dealer was not born here, though. The same anonymous team had run an earlier table called Gambit, a perpetual exchange over on BNB Chain, which itself grew from a still-older project named XVIX. GMX was that same croupier, set up in a new room with a sharper game. The lead developer is known only as the pseudonymous @xdev_10, and even that name is unverified. Nobody has ever seen the face under the hood.

January 2022. The table opened a second room on Avalanche, then later a third on Ethereum mainnet. A second version of the protocol, V2, raised the maximum leverage to 100x and wired in Chainlink price feeds so the odds were quoted cleanly. For a while it was one of the busiest non-custodial perp floors in all of crypto.

The croupier's one rule never changed. He deals the bets and he keeps the fees, but the chips stay on your side of the table.

📊 Stats

🔒Self-custody Coins stay in your wallet

🎚️Leverage Up to 100x in V2

🕵️Team openness Founders fully anonymous

💎Supply tightness ~13.25M forecast, governance-set

🎢Trader risk Leverage cuts both ways

🧩 How it works

GMX has two kinds of people at the table. Some are liquidity providers: they deposit assets into shared liquidity pools (called GLP in V1, or market-specific 'GM' pools in V2) and earn a slice of the fees. Others are traders, who trade directly against those pools. There is no company order book in the middle, just smart contracts matching the two sides.

💧 Providers fill the shared pool → 🃏 the pool takes the other side of every 🎚️ trade (up to 100x) → 🪙 fees flow back down to providers and to staked GMX. No company order book in the middle.

GMX is not a blockchain of its own, so it has no mining or staking consensus, it borrows the security of whatever chain it sits on. The GMX token itself is an ERC-20 you can stake to earn protocol fees and use to vote on governance.

🌗 Light & Shadow

🌕 Light

Genuinely non-custodial. Your coins stay in your wallet while you trade, so there is no exchange that can freeze or lose them for you
Works across three chains (Arbitrum, Avalanche, Ethereum), and became one of the better-known perp DEXs in DeFi
The token has a clear job: stake for a cut of real fees and vote on how the protocol runs

🌑 Shadow

The founders are fully anonymous. If something goes wrong there is no team to hold accountable, and the @xdev_10 name is unverified
Up to 100x leverage is a double-edged sword, small moves can wipe a position out, so it is genuinely risky for beginners
Token rewards are not guaranteed. Per official docs, staking rewards are currently suspended (2026), with buybacks pooling in the Treasury until GMX hits $90

🧬 Evolution lineage

GMX is not a chain fork of any coin. It is the same anonymous team's earlier work rebranded and rebuilt, project after project.

🧪 XVIX 🎲 Gambit (BNB Chain) 🃏 GMX (2021, Arbitrum)

It shares the 'perp DEX' category with peers like dYdX and GNS, but those are cousins by trade only, not by founder or shared code.

🧭 Meet other friends

🔷 Arbitrum 🔺 Avalanche 🦄 Uniswap

See the whole codex →

❓ FAQ

What is GMX?: A decentralized exchange where you trade crypto, including leveraged 'perpetual' bets of up to 100x, directly from your own wallet. No company holds your coins, so the trading is non-custodial. It runs as smart contracts on Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Ethereum.
Is GMX its own blockchain?: No. GMX is a protocol, a set of smart contracts, deployed on top of chains that already exist: Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Ethereum mainnet. The GMX token itself is an ERC-20 utility and governance token, not the coin of its own chain.
Who made GMX?: An anonymous team. The lead developer is reported to be the pseudonymous @xdev_10, but that identity is unverified. The same team had earlier shipped a perp DEX called Gambit on BNB Chain, and GMX grew out of that work, launching on Arbitrum in September 2021.
How many GMX tokens are there?: The forecasted maximum is 13.25 million GMX, but that is not a hard cap, minting beyond it needs a holder governance vote. Around 10.4 million are in circulation. That is far smaller and tighter than Bitcoin's fixed 21 million, yet still adjustable.
Does staking GMX still pay rewards?: Staking normally earns a share of protocol fees, but per the official docs those rewards are currently suspended (2026). Instead the protocol uses about 27% of fees to buy back GMX, and that GMX builds up in the Treasury until the token reaches $90. This is a time-sensitive policy that may change.

⚠️ Not investment advice. All figures are for information only