Referrals

Get fee discounts and earn rewards through the GMX referral program.

How it works

The GMX referral program lets you earn rewards when traders you refer open or close positions on GMX V2. To participate as an affiliate, create a referral code and share your referral link.

To create a referral code:

1. Go to the Referrals page.
2. Select the Affiliates tab.
3. Enter a referral code using letters (A–Z, a–z), digits (0–9), or underscores. Codes are case-sensitive and can be up to 20 characters long.
4. Submit the transaction to register the code on-chain.

note

Arbitrum is the leader chain for new referral-code validation. This validation applies to new code registrations; existing referral codes remain valid on their registered chains, and referral discounts and rewards continue to apply on supported chains. New codes are validated by ReferralCodeValidator; when a code is registered on Arbitrum, it becomes valid there immediately and is propagated to follower chains through LayerZero. If you start registration from a follower chain, the request is forwarded to Arbitrum, and the code becomes valid on that follower chain after validation has propagated back. Register on Arbitrum for the fastest and least ambiguous setup.

Once your code is registered, copy your referral link from the Referrals page. The link format is:

https://app.gmx.io/#/trade/?ref=your-code

Share this link on any platform. When a trader opens the link, your referral code is stored in their browser. The code is written to the contract the first time they create an order with a registered and valid code. From that point on, the trader receives a fee discount and you earn rewards, unless the trader later qualifies for a GMX-managed protocol code as described below.

The referral program is subject to change as determined by GMX token holders. The full referral terms are available on the GMX website.

Affiliate rewards

With the standard public referral tiers, affiliates earn 5% to 15% of referred traders' opening and closing fees for leverage trading. Traders using the code receive a 5% or 10% discount on those fees.

Tier	Trader discount	Affiliate reward
1	5%	5%
2	10%	10%
3	10%	15%

Rewards and discounts don't apply to borrow fees or funding fees.

Tier 3 affiliates receive their 15% reward in the market's collateral token.

Tiers

The referral program uses a tier system to prevent gaming through self-referrals, ensuring affiliates receive rewards for the traders they brought to the platform.

Anyone can create a Tier 1 code. To upgrade to standard Tier 2 or Tier 3, your account must meet the following weekly thresholds:

Tier	Active users	Combined volume
2	15+	$5M+
3	30+	$25M+

If your account meets these criteria, send a DM to @GMXPartners to request an upgrade. Wallet providers and other protocols are also eligible for standard Tier 2 and Tier 3 rewards.

Additional partner tiers, including Tier 4, may be assigned by GMX Partners case-by-case for selected top affiliates. These tiers don't have public weekly qualification thresholds and aren't available through the standard upgrade criteria above.

esGMX rewards

Tier 3 affiliates previously received a weekly esGMX bonus via the fee distributor, capped at 5,000 esGMX tokens per week. This distribution ended on February 4, 2026.

If you received esGMX through the referral program before it ended, you can still vest it using the Affiliate vault. To access it, open the vesting modal from the esGMX card on the Earn page and select the Affiliate vault tab. Unlike standard vesting, the Affiliate vault doesn't require a paired GMX or GLP deposit.

Claiming rewards

Rewards in the referral program work differently depending on whether you're a trader receiving discounts or an affiliate earning rewards.

V2

Traders receive fee discounts automatically. The discount is deducted from the position fee at trade execution.

Affiliates accumulate rewards on every trade made by their referred traders. Rewards accrue per market in the collateral token of each market. You can claim them at any time from the Referrals page using the "Claimable rebates" card.

When claiming, you can optionally enable "Swap all rewards into one asset" to consolidate your rewards into a single token before receiving them. Available target tokens are:

• Arbitrum: GMX, USDC, WETH, BTC
• Avalanche: USDC, WAVAX, BTC

This swap is routed through an external aggregator (KyberSwap), not through GMX pools. The default allowed slippage is 3% and includes price impact and fees — unlike GMX native swaps where slippage and price impact are separate. You can adjust the slippage in the claim modal. If a swap route is unavailable for a particular reward token, the claim modal displays a warning.

V1 (historical)

V1 trading is no longer active. No new V1 referral rewards are earned. Historically, V1 rewards and discounts were distributed as airdrops — ETH on Arbitrum and AVAX on Avalanche — every Wednesday. Your past V1 distribution history remains viewable on the Referrals page, labeled "V1 airdrop."

Protocol-assigned referral codes

Protocol-assigned referral codes give qualifying traders a fee discount without requiring a referral-code application.

Traders reaching $50M in lifetime volume on Arbitrum receive an automatic 5% fee discount. At $250M in lifetime volume on Arbitrum, that increases to 10%. No referral code application is needed; GMX assigns the discount code automatically.

GMX can also assign protocol-owned referral codes after certain milestones to preserve trader discounts while no longer assigning affiliate rewards for that trader.

Code	When it can be assigned	Trader discount	Affiliate reward
EARNED_TRADER_DISCOUNT_5	Organic VIP referral tier: trader reaches $50M lifetime volume on Arbitrum without a higher eligible protocol code	5%	0%
EARNED_TRADER_DISCOUNT_10	Organic VIP referral tier: trader reaches $250M lifetime volume on Arbitrum without a higher eligible protocol code	10%	0%
DIRECT_GMX_DISCOUNT_5	Trader graduates from a Tier 1 referral code	5%	0%
DIRECT_GMX_DISCOUNT_10	Trader graduates from a Tier 2 or Tier 3 referral code	10%	0%

Organic VIP referral tiers are based on the trader's Arbitrum lifetime volume. Referral-code graduation applies per trader once either limit is reached, and the limits are the same for every tier: 12 months assigned to the code, or $20,000 in affiliate rewards generated for that referrer. The original tier only determines the resulting protocol code:

Original referral tier	Protocol code after graduation
Tier 1	DIRECT_GMX_DISCOUNT_5
Tier 2 or Tier 3	DIRECT_GMX_DISCOUNT_10

When a trader graduates, their trader discount is preserved, but new affiliate rewards for that trader stop accruing to the previous referrer.

If the active referral code shown on the Referrals page is one of these GMX protocol codes, the interface explains whether it was assigned because of an organic volume threshold or because a previous referral code reached the graduation threshold.

Transferring a referral code

To transfer ownership of a referral code to a new address, you interact directly with the ReferralStorage contract through a block explorer. There's no frontend UI for this action.

warning

Transferring a referral code is permanent. Once transferred, you lose ownership and only the new owner can transfer it further. There is no way to reclaim the code without the new owner's cooperation. Verify the destination address carefully before submitting.

The ReferralStorage contract addresses are:

• Arbitrum: 0xe6fab3F0c7199b0d34d7FbE83394fc0e0D06e99d
• Avalanche: 0x827ed045002ecdabeb6e2b0d1604cf5fc3d322f8
• MegaETH: 0xAd917849372eaEF498E982F90bA6459a43ecbd31

To transfer a code on a given network:

1. Convert your referral code to its bytes32 encoding using a tool like DEVoven with the "Append Zeros" option checked. For example, the code code encodes to 0x636f646500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
2. Open the ReferralStorage contract link for your network from the list above.
3. Go to the "Write Contract" tab.
4. Connect the wallet that currently owns the referral code.
5. Expand the setCodeOwner function. Enter the bytes32 value from step 1 in the _code field and the destination wallet address in the _newAccount field.
6. Submit the transaction by clicking "Write."