Treasury Committee to push for Greater Growth

[Seraph]

TLDR;
Get a committee to manage treasury to grow
use the money to build dev, marketing, buy gmx tokens as incentives for the new referral system, and incentive traders.

This proposal outlines a comprehensive strategy for the GMX DAO to actively manage its treasury to foster long-term growth. It proposes the formation of a dedicated Treasury Committee and a multi-pronged plan for fund utilization, focusing on strategic investments, core team expansion, and a cohesive approach to marketing, incentives, and GMX token buybacks.

Most important, is (1) for a committee to manage the treasury funds, the details we can work out later.
For example, all these percentage for increasing the fund size or doing marketing, we can set up the details based on better info and execution later.

1. Establishment of a GMX Treasury Committee

To ensure a disciplined and expert-driven approach to treasury management, I propose the formation of a GMX Treasury Committee. This committee would be responsible for the day-to-day management of the treasury’s liquid assets, adhering to a mandate set by the DAO.

Committee Structure and Responsibilities:

• Composition: The committee will consist of 5 members, chosen from the GMX community and core contributors, with demonstrated expertise in DeFi, asset management, and protocol operations. The members would be nominated by the community and elected via a Snapshot vote with a term of one year.

• Mandate: The committee’s primary responsibilities would include:

  • Developing and implementing a risk-averse investment strategy for a portion of the treasury’s liquid assets.

  • Providing quarterly reports on treasury performance, including returns and fund allocation.

  • Overseeing the fund distribution for approved proposals (e.g., developer grants, marketing initiatives).

  • Proposing new treasury-related initiatives and seeking DAO approval for significant fund allocations.

2. Strategic Utilization of the GMX Treasury ($40M USD)

I propose the GMX treasury be utilized across three key areas to maximize protocol growth, with the following initial allocation targets as a starting point for discussion:

i) Treasury Growth and Asset Management (45% - $18M USD)

A significant portion of the treasury should be dedicated to generating yield to ensure the protocol’s long-term sustainability. This yield would supplement the treasury and provide a continuous revenue stream for operational expenses.

• Farming & Investment: Funds would be deployed into low-risk, battle-tested DeFi protocols. Potential strategies include:

  • Providing liquidity to stablecoin pools on trusted DEXs to earn trading fees.

  • Staking stablecoins in institutional-grade yield-bearing protocols.

  • Holding a diversified basket of blue-chip crypto assets (e.g., ETH, BTC) to grow with the broader market.

ii) Core Team Expansion (25% - $10M USD)

To maintain GMX’s position as a leading DEX, continuous product innovation is paramount. We need to accelerate our development roadmap by attracting top talent.

• Hiring Developers: Allocate a portion of the funds to hire full-time developers specializing in smart contract development, front-end and back-end engineering, and security. Key roles would include:

  • Senior Solidity Engineers to build out new features and improve GMX V2.

  • Experienced Front-end Developers to enhance the user interface and overall user experience.

  • Security Specialists to perform internal audits and secure new features.

iii) Protocol Growth: Marketing, Incentives & GMX Buyback (30% - $12M USD)

Acquiring new users and retaining our loyal trader base is crucial for growth. A dedicated budget would power strategic marketing campaigns, ongoing incentive programs, and a targeted GMX token buyback, as these are all intertwined for protocol growth.

• Strategic Marketing and Trader Incentives: Funds would be used for:

  • Paid advertisements on crypto-native platforms (e.g., Twitter, CoinGecko).

  • Partnerships with key crypto influencers and content creators to drive organic traffic.

  • Sponsoring hackathons and community events to attract builders.

  • Designing and implementing data-driven incentive programs to increase trading volume and user stickiness. This could include trading competitions, fee rebates, or other direct incentives.

• GMX Token Buyback as a Growth Mechanism: A portion of the funds would be used to programmatically buy GMX tokens from the open market. This strategic buyback acts as a powerful marketing and incentive tool by reducing sell pressure and creating a floor price. The purchased GMX tokens would then be converted into escrowed GMX (esGMX) to be distributed as additional incentives for traders, creating a powerful flywheel that contributes to the protocol’s long-term health.

  I strongly support the new referral system being proposed https://gov.gmx.io/t/referral-code-system-redesign-guilds-and-parameter-changes/ and I hope a good amount of treasury can be used to support the esGMX for referrals.

Conclusion

This proposal aims to move the GMX DAO from a passive treasury holding model to an active, growth-oriented one.

By forming a dedicated committee and allocating funds across strategic investments, team expansion, marketing, and GMX-centric incentives, we can secure the protocol’s financial future and accelerate our path to becoming the dominant on-chain perpetual exchange.

I look forward to the community’s feedback and hope to see this initiative move to a vote.

[0xjunwei]

For, this proposal, would be keen on committee suggestions such as which individual, do hope the chosen members are non-biased and not from other committee if possible else there is overlapping roles and concentrated power within key individuals. Would suggest for more diverse selection, but all for proposal

[Seraph]

If this idea takes root, choosing members would and should be by selected by X and BD.

Not a big fan of voting, as it slows things a lot, but understand if the community wants it, voting can be conducted.

May not even need so many, just 1 expert to grow the money, 1 expert to allocate to devs or marketing….

[0xjunwei]

Got it, agree on no voting, thought that was the plan from what the usual process is. Strong Yes from me, hope to push for vote asap

[ShoeStar]

Hello Seraph,

I looked at your reply under my post and decided to come take a look at your proposal. I have some key questions and concerns that I would like to ask and add to this discussion.

My first point is this: at the Core of GMX it is really just a network where strangers can come together across the globe and pool their money together without going through the hudles of the financial system. As GMX grows and matures, I would hope that the stakeholders in this community look beyond this as a perpetual trading platform and more of a decentralized investment company. I particularly enjoy the thought of random people being able to generate fees from trading and using that revenue to buy real assets and grow this DAO into something greater than just a defi trading platform. That being said.

I propose that we find a broker to handle all custodian matters, this is the greatest in terms of security. This would also mean unlocking the ability to purchase real assets such as equities, commodities, and perhaps further down the line, private businesses. If this is not the preferred way than we should look over at tokenized stocks and bonds. The reason we shouldn’t purchase “Blue Chip” BTC and ETH is because at the core they are not blue chip. I am a firm believer that if crypto crashed, gmx will be fine because the business model attracts people that enjoy higher volatility. We are shareholders of a business and therefore, should use this free cashflow to purchase real assets.

I further believe that purchasing GMX buy backs is not an optimal use of our cashflow. Great companies purchase stock back when they have no better way to spend it. We can use that money for multiple different things such as purchasing real assets(stocks, fixed income, etc), increasing marketing, or try and expand into RWA assets as that is the direction institional investors are heading.

To me the price should seem irrelevant, if you strip down all the fancy technology at the core, we are business owners that have great cashflow and real profit by providing a service. Therefore, we should expand and look beyond the scope of what we are and what we can be.

[Seraph]

Hi ShoeStar
thanks for your ideas.
I personally feels that GMX shld focus on its core business- PERPS.
Providing leverage trading to people, from their own wallets, without the risks of CEX.

Hence, imho, all the treasury should focus on growing this business, reaching out to new traders, improving the trading experience for traders.
Along the way, as a side quest, the business of catering to traders will allow LP to earn high APY, a rich treasury to develop more and bigger business

At our current stage, i think the above should be the focus and not just using treasury to expand RWA or hiring a broker to handle funds. We are, after all, not a mutual fund nor ETF designed for growth

Our key aim should focus on luring more traders in, with greater utility and better trading experience and liquidity.
And I hope the treasury growth will push that.

[nxs]

GMX price has been in a structural decline for over a year now. Most would agree that it’s undervalued. We believe in the project and want to see it succeed. But the flywheel needs a spark and i think this proposal could be the start. GMX needs a dedicated treasury/investment committee to move from passive custody to disciplined, strategic capital deployment. A small, accountable committee drawn from finance, product, core engineering, and an independent community advisor can set runway targets, approve staged funding for high-impact investments, and publish regular KPIs so the DAO can see results. As we have seen with other DAO’s treasuries lately, buybacks have had positive price reactions. More strategic marketing and promotions are needed to bring GMX back to the glory days. Let’s keep refining. I hope to hear from some of the leadership and their ideas. Thank you

[Seraph]

Yes, agree with you. the difficult part is choosing committee from frinance, product, core and engineering background.

i believe though, the committee should focus on growing the business. growing the treasury shld be like a sidequest….

pls do give your ideas and suggestions, we would love to go through and discuss more

[ShoeStar]

NXS, I agree that we should set up a treasury/ investment committe as this will help GMX grow in the long run, however, I beleive buy backs are optimal in the short term but not long term. Due to the inflation of the coin, which I do not know if theres a max limit with esgmx to be quite honest, buybacks will only help short term. As the American economy pushes to use Stable coins as a source of liquidiy for treasuries, we will see larger amounts of liquidity in the crypto market as a whole. I’d much rather we use the treasury to position ourselves in a way where we are an attractive enough platform to capture that liqudity. Furthermore, I believe a better idea would be to put that money into R&D and figure out how we can add Tokenized RWA’s, as I understand many institutions that are tokenizing their equity and or debt, are doing so through white wallets meaning you cannot trade it freely on defi. For example. OUSG. We should push to extend leveraging to those RWA’s. As the crypto space matures, giving traders leverage exposure to equities will make GMX more attractive.

[ShoeStar]

I agree on your point that we should improve the business model, I would argue to perhpas focus on less meme coins and focus on Tokenized RWA’s. To your point, we are not a mutual fund nor an investment company, however, that doesn’t mean we should overshadow the benefits of holding assets within our treasury. I would argue at minimum holding gold, especially during this period of high inflation, expanding M2 money supply, and government bonds spiking all around the world, we as an org, should have a conversation about hedging. After all we are all on the same team and should strive to come up with innovative ideas, as we are at the front of it already.

[Seraph]

Yes, tokenized RWAs are something that we are looking at.
Currently GMX-Solana has tokenized RWAs, and we are learning from their experience and hope to roll out tokenized RWAs soon for traders to trade.

Currently treasury is focused on marketing to reach out to more traders.
and of course i hope to shift more dollars to marketing, and developers for more R&Ds to get more products fot traders.

[0xjunwei]

Bump just curious when will this be pushed for a vote ?

[Saurabh]

Will keep you posted!

[gmboop]

We have $50M in assets but only $160M in market cap. Other perp DEXs with weaker fundamentals are valued 50× higher. And right now, perp DEXs dominate the narrative. Worse, we’re not even in the comparison—it’s like we don’t exist.

Let’s launch a campaign on @KaitoAI right now and make it clear we’re very much alive.

[brawlaphant]

I’d love to put more time into promoting GMX. I’ve been doing similar work with Regen Network, and I’d be open to a comparable arrangement here. For me to take this on sustainably, the rate would need to be higher than current committee stipends — around $2K/month in GMX to ecowealth.eth.

My contribution would be simple but consistent: up to 4 short-form videos per day (MidJourney visuals + GMX branding + my original music), shipped across YouTube, each leading with a GMX referral link. The GMX trader is a sophisticated trader, but we also need new eyes from broader platforms — the type of reach that builds awareness and funnels people into the ecosystem.

Longer term, I’d like to experiment with a trading program that runs directly on GMX liquidity and explore cultural bridges (e.g. regenerative finance narratives). But at the core, this proposal is about delivering consistent, high-signal marketing content to bring more attention to GMX.

[brawlaphant]

I like the 3-way split (treasury growth / team / protocol). To layer in some framing:

• $16M in majors (BTC, ETH, ARB, SOL) should remain untouched as long-term reserves. That’s our low-risk upside for the bull market.

• $12M in the Uniswap v3 pool is also realistically off-limits — it’s serving liquidity and shouldn’t be moved.

• That leaves ~$24–28M that is actually allocatable across the buckets you outlined.

Within that active pool ~$24m:

1. Treasury Growth (DeFi yield, farming stables)

We already have GM/GLV products capturing this dynamic. I’d keep this slice lighter, more as buffer capital.

2. Core Team Expansion

This is the clearest multiplier. Allocating toward contributors, devs, and security talent feels like the best use of concentrated capital.

3. Protocol Growth (marketing, incentives)

This is where even small pilots can move the needle. Consistent content + referral integration, for example, costs very little relative to treasury size but compounds brand and user growth over time.

[brawlaphant]

Thanks to everyone pushing this forward — a Treasury Committee is an important step.

I’d like to make myself available for nomination to one of the 5 seats, and I’m curious whether nominations should be posted here in this thread or if a separate post will be created for nominees.

Either way, I’m glad to support this process and the members who step up to serve.

[Seraph]

Interesting idea let us consider this and discuss in our meeting

But I think the real platform now is TikTok rather than YouTube

[brawlaphant]

I already have YouTube rolling and growing (gmregenerationklimax) — it’s the easiest platform for consistent scheduling and the one that compounds best over the long term. That said, if the DAO sees TikTok as an important channel for short-term reach and motion, I’m open to running content there as well.

[Seraph]

now the difficult task is getting 2-3 treasury members who volunteer
and whom the governance committee can accept and lets move forward.