Try Quests to earn cryptoUntitled BoardGMXP
GMX, a perp protocol, has been attracting attention recently for the massive fee revenue being generated. Examine and compare the protocol over recent days and weeks on Arbitrum. How has the protocol been performing over the past month? Three months? How is it absorbing these massive fees? Note any overarching themes or narratives that you find.
What is GMX ?
GMX is a decentralized spot and perpetual exchange on Arbitrum and Avalanche chains that supports low swap fees and zero price impact trades. Trading is supported by a unique multi-asset pool that earns liquidity providers fees from market making, swap fees and leverage trading. Dynamic pricing is supported by Chainlink Oracles and an aggregate of prices from leading volume exchanges.
GMX Token:
GMX token is the GMX platform's utility and governance token, holding the token unlocks a variety of benefits and also Accrues 30% of the platform's generated fees.
Nitro Upgrade:
Arbitrum, one of the most popular Ethereum layer 2 networks, successfully deployed its Nitro upgrade in August, which improved the user experience for application developers, reduced network fees and increased transaction speeds.
According to the above data, total 108327 swap transactions were made on the GMX ever (since 2022-04-022). these swaps were made by 37421 unique wallets and the total USD volume of these swaps was $230,713,617.63
Moreover, on the right chart we can see the GMX swap stats for the past month and also past 3 months.
On the left we can see growth rate of swaps volume on GMX during past 3 months and as we see, the impact of high September high spikes is clearly visible like some steps on this cumulative chart.
Based on the above charts, highest number of swaps and also swappers on GMX during the past 3 months have achieved during 28th and 29th June 2022 with high two high spikes. but according to the $volume chart, the USD volume of these swaps and swappers were not very high and did not cause spikes on the Volume chart.
Also during the past month, we have the highest number of swaps and swappers on 6th September but the highest swaps volume has achieved on 7th September.
Totally, there are several increasing and decreasing trend of GMX swaps over time with some sudden high spikes. but the activity of swaps on GMX protocol have increased since the start of the September and it can be because of NITRO upgrade on Arbitrum chain.
According to the above charts, during 28th and 29th June and also on 6th September, there were a high peak of new users on GMX protocol. as like as previous charts, we can see more registration of new users on GMX protocol during september that can be because of Arbitrum nitro upgrade.
As mentioned above, WETH and USDC assets are by far the top tokens that generetared the most liquidation fee for GMX protocol.
As a health calculation index, I have calculated the difference between USD value of swapped in token on GMX vs USD value of swapped out token (can kinda call it slippage). the more this index is closed to 1, the better performance.
As we see, in most number of days, this index is so close (or equal) to 1 and this shows GMX protocol is doing well in this term.
On the above charts we can see the daily volume of liquidation fee generated by Symbol during the past month and also past 3 months
As we see, the highest volume of liquidation fee have achieved on 7th September. this is the same day with most activity of users (in terms of volume) on GMX protocol based on the previous charts.
Also, we can see WETH token and after that USDC, have the most share of generated liquidation fee over time.
According to the above charts, there is almost a constant number of long and short positions over time with a very light incresing daily trend.
Moreover, we can see almost an equal number of long and short positions in most of the days. As like as swap charts, we can also see most activity of long and short positions during 28th and 29th June during the past 3 months.
Also during past month, the most number of positions were executed on 6th September.
Methodology
The contract address for GMX swap router is : 0xaBBc5F99639c9B6bCb58544ddf04EFA6802F4064.
Moreover, there are total 9 assets currently available on GMX:
- '0xff970a61a04b1ca14834a43f5de4533ebddb5cc8' | 'USDC'
- '0xfea7a6a0b346362bf88a9e4a88416b77a57d6c2a' | 'MIM'
- '0xf97f4df75117a78c1a5a0dbb814af92458539fb4' | 'LINK'
- '0x82af49447d8a07e3bd95bd0d56f35241523fbab1' | 'WETH'
- '0x2f2a2543b76a4166549f7aab2e75bef0aefc5b0f' | 'WBTC'
- '0xfa7f8980b0f1e64a2062791cc3b0871572f1f7f0' | 'UNI'
- '0xda10009cbd5d07dd0cecc66161fc93d7c9000da1' | 'DAI'
- '0x17fc002b466eec40dae837fc4be5c67993ddbd6f' | 'FRAX'
- '0xfd086bc7cd5c481dcc9c85ebe478a1c0b69fcbb9' | 'USDT'
GMX Vault contract address is 0x489ee077994B6658eAfA855C308275EAd8097C4A and GMX position manager contract address is 0x87a4088Bd721F83b6c2E5102e2FA47022Cb1c831. These 2 are used for liquidation fees on GMX protocol.
As like as many other platforms, there are 2 futures positions on GMX protocol: Increase Position (LONG) and Decrease Position (SHORT)
The trading fee to open a position is 0.1% of the position size, similarly, there is a 0.1% fee when closing the position. There is also a "Borrow Fee" that is deducted at the start of every hour. This is the fee paid to the counter-party of your trade. Moreover, when depositing collateral into a long position, there is a 0.3% swap fee for the conversion of the asset to its USD value, e.g. ETH amount to USD value. This is to prevent deposits from being used as a zero fee swap. This does not apply to shorts. Withdrawing of collateral from longs and shorts do not have this fee as well.
As mentioned above, GMX is the utility and governance token. Accrues 30% of the platform's generated fees. On the other hand, GLP is the liquidity provider token. Accrues 70% of the platform's generated fees.
Considering the above facts and using arbitrum.core.fact_event_logs (and fact_hourly_token_prices for USD prices), we are going to do some analysis about GMX protocol:
According to the above charts, 0x314f0a7bb5ddb4daecece9d3297e00e088713aff has by far performed the most number of swaps on GMX protocol but the total swap volume of 0x57790b0b998ba2c9dfe55e73300ffc1d3e457169 is higher than all other swappers.
On the above charts, we can see the distribution of Longs vs Short positions on GMX (All time). As we see, the number of Long executed positions on this protocol is more than Short positions.
Discord: Ali3N#8546
Some Additional Data from Cryptorank
According to the above data from Cryptorank, we can see GMX protocol is on the 3rd rank of some other DeFi protocols in both terms of Revenue and also User Fees during the recent weeks.
Arbitrum Odyssey
During June 2022, GMX was featured for the Arbitrum Odyssey. To receive the exclusive Arbi-verse NFTs, participants had need to complete all three of the following tasks on the GMX platform:
- Open a leveraged trade at ____
- Do a swap at ____
- Mint GLP at ____
So, we can now ensure that those huge activity of users on GMX platform during late-June is because of this odyssey and users attack(!) to the GMX platform. Since there was no minimum limit for volume of transactions, we did not see any high spikes on the volume charts.