在本期 WuBlockchain 播客中，我们采访了 GMTrade 联合创始人 William，谈论了该项目从 Solana 上的 GMX 分叉演变为独立协议、团队为何选择 Solana、其集合流动性交易模型的优势、与 Chainlink 低延迟预言机的集成、LP 收益率的来源和可持续性、积分系统以及扩展到非加密资产交易的计划。William 表示，GMTrade 旨在利用 Solana 的优势低费用和高性能，结合 GMX 风格的集合流动性模型，为新上市提供更低的交易成本和更快的上市时间。通过添加外汇、大宗商品、指数以及最终股票等现实世界的资产市场，该团队希望建立一个用户可以交易一切的去中心化平台。其长期愿景是成为 Robinhood 的链上版本——一个用户可以交易加密货币和宏观资产的单一平台，同时还通过专用应用程序扩展到更多移动优先的交易用例。GMTrade 的起源、Solana 策略及其交易模型的优势主持人：欢迎，William。您能否先简单介绍一下您自己和 GMTrade？William：我是 Willi
am，GMTrade 联合创始人。我于 2014 年进入加密货币领域。早在高中时，我就开始挖掘比特币，后来我帮助启动了一些加密货币项目，从事机构做市工作，并自始至终都在进行交易。我于 2017 年开始交易永续合约，并于 2023 年在 GMX 历史 PnL 排行榜上排名第 9。从很多方面来说，GMTrade 都源于 GMX 背景。GMTrade 是一个基于 Solana 构建的去中心化永续协议。一开始，您可以将其视为“Solana 上的 GMX”。但随着我们不断建设，我们意识到产品、工程复杂性和长期社区潜力都已经不仅仅是一个分叉了。所以最终，我们决定作为一个完全独立的项目前进，拥有自己的团队、社区和代币系统。项目的发展也
In this episode of the WuBlockchain Podcast, we speak with William, co-founder of GMTrade, about the project’s evolution from a GMX fork on Solana into an independent protocol, why the team chose Solana, the advantages of its pooled-liquidity trading model, its integration with Chainlink Low-Latency Oracles, the source and sustainability of LP yields, its points system, and plans to expand into non-crypto asset trading.
William said GMTrade aims to leverage Solana’s low fees and high performance, combined with a GMX-style pooled liquidity model, to offer lower trading costs and faster time-to-market for new listings. By adding real-world asset markets such as FX, commodities, indices, and eventually stocks, the team wants to build a decentralized platform where users can trade everything.
Its long-term vision is to become the on-chain version of Robinhood — a single platform where users can trade both crypto and macro assets, while also expanding into more mobile-first trading use cases through a dedicated app.
GMTrade’s Origins, Solana Strategy, and the Advantages of Its Trading Model
Host: Welcome, William. Could you start with a quick intro to yourself and GMTrade?
William: I’m William, co-founder of GMTrade. I got into crypto in 2014. Back in high school, I was mining Bitcoin, and later I helped start a few crypto projects, worked in institutional market making, and kept trading throughout. I started trading perpetuals in 2017, and in 2023 I ranked №9 on GMX’s historical PnL leaderboard. In many ways, GMTrade grew out of that GMX background.
GMTrade is a decentralized perpetuals protocol built on Solana. At the beginning, you could think of it as “GMX on Solana.” But as we kept building, we realized the product, the engineering complexity, and the long-term community potential had all grown beyond just being a fork. So in the end, we decided to move forward as a fully independent project, with its own team, community, and token system.
The project’s development has also been closely tied to our work with Chainlink. As Chainlink rolled out its new low-latency data feeds on Solana, trading real-world assets became much more feasible, and that opened up a much bigger market opportunity for us. For example, the FX market is far larger than crypto, which is one of the key reasons we chose to keep expanding.
Host: What metrics does GM Trade currently care about most?
William: Compared with raw trading volume, we care more about open interest. What really matters is whether users are Williaming to put on larger positions and keep them open longer on GMTrade. At the end of the day, that comes down to whether we can offer rates and execution that are competitive enough.
Host: GMX originally took off on Arbitrum. Why did GMTrade choose Solana?
William: The most direct reason is Solana’s low latency and extremely low fees, which make for a much better trading experience. Beyond that, we also believe Solana currently has a stronger concentration of retail users, and even quite a few institutional users as well. On top of that, Rust gives us real advantages at the infrastructure and development level, which helps us build a stronger product and ecosystem. So for us, Solana’s appeal really comes down to better execution, lower costs, and a larger user base.
Host: On Solana, a lot of users are more familiar with the order book model, but GMTrade uses a pooled liquidity model. What do you see as the edge there?
William: The biggest advantage of the pooled liquidity model is that it lets us launch new markets much faster, without having to solve for high-quality market making and order book depth first. Take gold or FX, for example. If you’re using an order book model, you need to build deep enough bids and asks very quickly, or the trading experience just falls apart.
GMTrade doesn’t rely on a traditional order book, which lets us scale into new markets more efficiently while keeping trading costs much lower. On fees, for instance, some leading comparable platforms on Solana charge around 3 basis points, while we charge just 0.5 basis points, roughly 5x to 9x cheaper. Order book-based platforms usually struggle to match that because they have to keep subsidizing market makers to maintain liquidity, and that’s a major structural cost.
So in our view, the core edge of the pooled model is simple: lower fees, better execution, and faster expansion into new markets.
GMTrade’s Oracle Infrastructure and the Logic Behind LP Yield
Host: GMTrade recently started using Chainlink Data Streams as part of its oracle infrastructure. What specific problems does a low-latency oracle solve for your trading architecture? And why did you choose to work with Chainlink?
William: There honestly aren’t that many oracle providers to choose from, and in my view, Chainlink is one of the strongest teams out there. Our relationship with Chainlink goes back a long way. We already had a long-term working relationship during the GMX days. Later, they told us they were building a new low-latency data feed product and planning to deploy it on Solana. For us, partnering with them was a pretty natural step, and to some extent it also pushed us to build GMTrade on Solana.
I think Chainlink not only has a mature product, but also a very strong engineering team. They’ve put a lot of effort into working closely with us and helping minimize oracle-related issues and risks as much as possible. On top of that, they keep expanding their data coverage, which is another big reason we chose to deepen the partnership.
Host: GMTrade places a lot of emphasis on its standalone GM pool. From an LP’s perspective, where exactly does yield come from today? And given that users are much more cautious about DeFi now, how do you explain the sustainability of that yield?
William: LP yield mainly comes from trading fees on opening and closing positions, borrowing fees, and liquidation fees. But this isn’t a lending pool in the traditional sense. When users deposit USDC into GMTrade, they’re not simply lending it out the way they would on Aave. They’re providing liquidity as the counterparty to traders, which means they also take on trading PnL risk.
That said, over the long run, losing traders usually outnumber profitable ones. Combined with protocol fees and borrowing fees, that creates a relatively stable source of yield. We think this model has already been somewhat validated by how GMX has performed over the past few years.
On sustainability, I’d stress that a lot of DeFi protocols advertise high yields that are really boosted by governance token incentives, so the actual organic yield is often much lower than it looks. GMTrade puts much more emphasis on real yield itself. Beyond that, users can also choose to join additional incentive programs and earn extra rewards on top of the base yield.
Another important point is that this incentive program doesn’t require users to lock up funds. They can opt in or opt out at any time. So strictly speaking, it’s more like an extra reward layer users can choose to add on top of their base yield, rather than a traditional long-term staking setup. Some more sophisticated LPs also hedge trader PnL exposure, turning it into a more risk-managed yield strategy.
GT Points and How GMTrade Measures Real Contribution
Host: A lot of perpetuals protocols see trading volume spike during points campaigns. How does GMTrade tell whether that growth reflects real long-term demand rather than short-term incentive farming? And since GT points come from trading fees, borrowing fees, LP activity, and referrals, how does the team make sure the system measures genuine protocol contribution instead of just wash volume?
William: Once you introduce a points system, some users are obviously going to farm it. That’s completely normal. But on the flip side, if people are Williaming to pay real costs to earn points, that also signals they’re constructive on the project’s future.
GT points aren’t handed out for free. Users earn them by paying real costs into the protocol. That could mean trading fees, borrowing fees, or simply holding positions for longer. Our design is somewhat similar to Bitcoin’s issuance logic: as the total amount of points grows, the cost of earning new points keeps rising. In other words, early participants get in at a lower cost, while earning points becomes progressively more expensive over time.
So the mechanism naturally rewards earlier and more authentic participation, instead of encouraging people to manufacture surface-level volume at minimal cost. If there’s a future token generation event, points William also serve as a key basis for recognizing and rewarding early users.
Of course, what we most want to see is users trading because they actually like the product. But even for points-driven users, the fees they pay still generate real revenue for the protocol, and that revenue can be reinvested into growth, marketing, and user acquisition. So in practice, they’re still creating positive value for the ecosystem.
That said, at this stage, I believe most users on the platform are still genuine users. We haven’t seen anything like large-scale points farming. And even where that behavior does exist, it’s not meaningless activity — it still involves participating in the protocol at real cost.
GMTrade’s Market Expansion and the “Trade Everything” Vision
Host: As we mentioned at the start, GMTrade has already expanded on Solana into FX, commodities, and index markets. Why did the team decide to move into these non-crypto markets at this stage? And you’ve repeatedly mentioned the idea of “Trade Everything” — how does that translate into the product roadmap and long-term vision? Among these new markets, which directions are you evaluating most seriously right now?
William: I think non-crypto markets — especially real-world assets — are one of the most important areas to watch right now. The reason is simple: traditional financial markets are much larger and far more accessible, and FX in particular is vastly bigger than crypto. That means once you bring FX, commodities, and indices on-chain, you have a chance to reach a much broader user base, along with much larger trading volume, open interest, and fee opportunities.
Right now, we’ve already launched a range of commodity markets, including WTI crude oil, gold, silver, and palladium, and we’re now live with close to 90 markets in total. Going forward, we’ll continue working with Chainlink to expand into more assets. That’s something we’ll keep pushing in the short and medium term, while the long-term goal is to eventually support thousands of markets.
For us, the core idea behind “Trade Everything” is to make GMTrade into a decentralized version of Robinhood. No matter what asset a user wants to trade, they should be able to do it here — and not just do it, but do it with better execution and lower fees. Because at the end of the day, traders don’t really care that much about the platform’s name or brand. What they care about is how much profit they actually keep after each trade.
On more specific opportunities, we’re also seriously evaluating prediction markets. But in my view, that’s a much more winner-take-all category, which makes it hard for new entrants to build an edge. By comparison, markets like stocks and indices are not winner-take-all, and there’s still plenty of room for multiple protocols to grow side by side.
Beyond that, I’d also love to see more new products emerge within the GMTrade ecosystem. One is a trading competition interface, where strong traders can earn additional rewards through a higher-fee competitive layer. Another is funded accounts, essentially an on-chain version of prop trading. After passing an evaluation, users could trade with larger amounts of capital and share in the profits. I think decentralized prop trading could become a very promising category.
Overall, I want GMTrade to become a true one-stop trading platform. As more real-world assets, FX, commodities, stocks, and other markets come online, users William be able to trade a much wider range of assets in one place, with a significantly better overall experience.
Mobile Strategy and Trading Use Cases: Letting Users Monitor and Manage Positions Anytime
Host: We’ve seen the team expand beyond a web-only product and announce a dedicated mobile app. What user problem is this app mainly meant to solve? And from a trader’s perspective, is there a meaningful difference between trading perpetuals on mobile versus desktop?
William: A lot of users now spend most of their time online on their phones. That’s especially true in crypto, where people are constantly on Telegram, replying to messages, and keeping up with the market from mobile. So the core idea behind the app is simple: deliver a smoother trading experience on the device users rely on most.
I also think perpetuals trading is often naturally a mobile-first use case. When you’re doing analysis, studying charts, and forming a trade idea, a bigger desktop screen is obviously better. But once you already have a position on, especially when you’re out and about, being able to check the market, close, add to, or take profit from your phone is much more practical.
Functionally, there’s no real difference between mobile and desktop. Anything users can do on desktop, they should also be able to do in the mobile app. The main difference is really just screen size, so charts are a bit more compact. For a lot of traders, the most practical workflow may be to analyze charts in TradingView on mobile first, then open GMTrade to execute the trade.
Even today, users can already access GMTrade on mobile through wallets like Phantom and Solflare, but a dedicated app William still provide a more complete and seamless experience.
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