A protocol governing more than 300 million dollars in total value locked operates with a formalized annual budget of 7 million dollars. The proprietary smart contracts infrastructure facilitate a net annual revenue stream of 22.2 million dollars according to the forum while Defillama reports 13 million. The human engine for the system consists of 30 individual contributors, a quadrupling since 2024, working under pseudonyms in an unincorporated startup partnership.
The GMX Workforce
The core operational team is structured through fractional full-time equivalent roles and relies on xdev_10 for technical architecture, coinflipcanada and Saulius for ecosystem business development and Tano for delegate coordination.
The governance committees main public contributors: Jonezee coordinates events and marketing; Saurabh administers incentives; Atomist manages DAO operations; Shogun oversees technical infrastructure; Jrogon and Fredegar handle ecosystem expansion.
All other operational capacities, including the security of GMX’s codebase and the infrastructure operators maintaining protocol uptime, function without public governance participation.
Compensation of roles mixes stablecoins and GMX tokens vesting over 24 months, aligning with protocol longevity. The extended workforce includes security firm Guardian Audits, data provider Chainlink Labs and the risk modeler Chaos Labs.
The Governance Interface
Upgrades control is executed through a 2 of 3 multisignature wallet. Two public signers are Krunal Amin, founder of UniDex and a delegate in the Arbitrum DAO, and Benjamin Simon, co-founder of Stealth Crypto with simultaneous roles in Lido, Aave, and MakerDAO. A third, pseudonymous signer known as Hanzo completes the set. This structure creates an interlocking directorate across major decentralized finance entities.
A different 4 of 6 multisig of designated committee representatives controls the treasury. However, voting power is concentrated; the top 100 token wallets control 96.2 percent of the 10.7 million GMX token supply. Moreover, an unique protocol reserve address holds 60 percent.
Revenue and Allocation Logic
The business model generates revenue from swap fees, leverage trading fees, and borrowing fees. Gross fees are approximately 36 million dollars annually. After operational costs, approximately 70% of revenue remains for investments.
Currently, the distribution is algorithmically fixed as dividend yield for investors. Therefore, 23 percent of revenue is redistributed to GMX token stakers, while 67 percent go to pool liquidity providers. A portion of V2 fees, 10 percent, is retained by the treasury reserves and forms the funding floor for formalizing the GMX Labs entity. The protocol treasury holds 78 million dollars, a sum noted as sufficient for operations under expected crypto market crisis at projected expenditure rates.
The DAO legal ambiguity could relegate the governance layer into a potential liability shield for developers, outsourcing regulatory risk regarding securities promotion to each contributor.
Two Scenarios from One Architecture
The human capital structure suggests two divergent paths. The corporate path sees expansion toward 50 to 70 contributors by 2027, incorporating dedicated developer relations, financial modeling specialists, legal compliance officers, and internal security researchers. This path implies evolution toward a formalized service entity, a foundation with audited statements for institutional deals.
The ecosystem path optimize into a core of at least 10 architects. Developer support becomes a grant program. Financial modeling incentivized with retroactive community payments. Legal functions exist only as retained counsel. Security relies on a continuous bounty program. Governance remains with the concentrated token holders.
Human Capital Sustainability
The structure shows defined roles in development and community management. The protocol could form dedicated teams for developer SDKs documentation and internal specialists for advanced financial modeling of smart contract tokenomics. Beyond individual contributors, it would formalize business development and legal compliance teams. Meanwhile, the internal security research coordination and governance facilitation is conducted through informal forum stewards and elected committees.
The system functions with 30 individuals bound by economic alignment, not employment contracts. The 2 of 3 multisig signers, with critical cross protocol affiliations, wield multidao influence. The treasury savings provides a buffer against market cycles. The contradiction between decentralized ideals and centralized execution was operationalized empirically.
The future of the protocol is a function of the GMX human capital. Management will either formalize the structure of current contributors or continue to rely on the unaccountable gravity of anonymous architects.
