Instead of an order book model employed by centralized exchanges (CEXs), trading occurs via its an innovation to the automated market model (AMM) deployed by DEXs like Uniswap. It features a native multi-asset pool, GLP, which generates revenue for liquidity providers.

GLP operates as a multi-asset liquidity pool (LP) which comprises of ETH, BTC, LINK, UNI, USDC, USDT, DAI and FRAX at the time of writing. Market prices depend on Chainlink's oracles, which collect token price data from all the top exchanges.

The decentralized exchange ecosystem is based on two tokens: GLP and GMX. The first token serves to supply liquidity. The GLP price reflects the value of all GMX assets, which are listed for trading with leverage and swaps. In other words, GLP is an index of all assets on the exchange. GMX is the utility and governance token.

Users can add liquidity by minting GLP, and in return, they receive 70% of all fees generated on the corresponding blockchain. Unlike some liquidity pools, GLP experiences no impermanent loss. Furthermore, the GLP pool acts as a counterparty for traders. When GLP token holders supply liquidity for leveraged trading, they profit when traders incur losses, and the opposite is also true.

At the time of writing, the GMX token circulating supply is over 8.7M. The expected maximum supply is 13.25M GMX tokens.

The tokenomics is as follows: 6M GMX allocated for XVIX and Gambit migration; 2M GMX paired with ETH for liquidity on Uniswap; 2M GMX set aside for vesting from Escrowed GMX rewards; 2M GMX tokens to the floor price fund; 1M GMX tokens designated for marketing, collaborations and community developers; 250K GMX tokens distributed to the team linearly over a 2-year period.

GMX is on the Arbitrum and Avalanche blockchain.

Arbitrum is a layer-2 blockchain which derives its security from the Ethereum network, which provides consensus and finality for Arbitrum transactions. In other words, Ethereum guarantees the validity of the rollup’s off-chain computation and data availability behind the computation.

On Avalanche, unlike proof-of-work or proof-of-stake, the Avalanche consensus mechanism does not have one leader processing transactions that get validated by others. Instead, all nodes process and validate transactions by employing a directed acyclic graph (DAG) protocol. That way, transactions are processed simultaneously, and validators' random polling ensures that transactions are correct with statistical certainty. There are no blocks in this consensus mechanism, allowing immediate finalization and significantly improving the blockchain’s speed.

The GMX contracts are also audited by ABDK Consulting, and there is an active bug bounty for GMX on Immunefi.

GMX is available on several cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, KuCoin and Kraken.

Want to keep track of GMX prices live? Download the CMC mobile app to follow the real-time prices of GMX, BTC and other cryptocurrencies.

Check out our deep dive into GMX.

Learn about dYdX — another popular derivatives DEX.

Find out more about Arbitrum — the leading Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution.

Check out Avalanche — an EVM-compatible blockchain.

Learn more about perpetual contracts with CMC Glosssary