Rented Growth
Did Trading Activity Persist After GMX’s Incentive Campaign?
GMX V2, a decentralized exchange for spot and perpetual crypto trading, ran trading incentives funded by Arbitrum. This analysis follows participating accounts after the campaign to see who resumed positive position-increase activity, and how retention differed by prior activity and campaign engagement.
Stack: PostgreSQL · SQL · Dune Analytics · On-chain Analytics · ECharts
What we are measuring
— accounts that opened or enlarged a GMX V2 position during the incentive campaign.
The same accounts followed for the next 60 days after the campaign.
At least one positive PositionIncrease. Closing an existing position alone does not count.
return rate
Most campaign participants did not return.
Of — campaign-period accounts, — returned within 60 days, producing a — return rate.
How quickly did campaign traders return?
| Day after campaign | Accounts returned | Cohort share |
|---|
Returns were heavily front-loaded.
— accounts had already returned within the first 10 days. That is — of everyone who eventually returned during the full 60-day window. After the first few weeks, additional returns accumulated much more slowly.
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Established traders had a 2.1× higher 60-day return rate
| Group | Campaign accounts | Returned | Return rate |
|---|
The campaign population was not homogeneous.
— of campaign participants were newly observed, meaning they had no qualifying GMX activity during the preceding 90-day lookback. Established traders returned at —, compared with — for newly observed accounts, about — higher.
Newly observed accounts were not uniformly low-quality: their post-campaign return rate rose from — among one-event participants to — among accounts with 10+ qualifying campaign events.
Sample size under each bucket: established / newly observed accounts.
| Campaign PositionIncrease events | Group | Returned | Campaign accounts | Return rate |
|---|
Among newly observed accounts, return was — after one campaign event and — after 10 or more (— as high).
Across — campaign accounts, there were — qualifying PositionIncrease events.
Share of campaign totals. Hover a bar for both measures.
| Account group | Share of qualifying events | Share of aggregate positive position-size increase |
|---|
The top 10% of accounts generated — of qualifying PositionIncrease events, while the top 1% alone accounted for — of aggregate positive position-size increase. The top 10% accounted for —.
In other words, — accounts participated, but most measured position-size growth came from a relatively small group of very large traders.