GMX recently concluded its Arbitrum S.T.I.P. campaign and it's time to assess its success. Did the protocol effectively transform GMX v2 into foundational DeFi infrastructure for @Arbitrum..? Part 2: Trading Incentives To recap, the STIP campaign aimed to: 🔹 Encourage on-chain engagement with DeFi on Arbitrum by increasing the activity on GMX V2. 🔹 Create a range of perpetual and spot pools that are highly liquid, yield-earning, composable and capital-efficient. 🔹 Allocate part of the STIP grant for a Grants Program for Arbitrum ecosystem partners building on GMX V2. 🔹 Convert centralised exchange users to DEX users, and foster a vibrant on-chain trading environment. Were those goals achieved? Let's take a closer look at the evidence: GMX targeted three main stakeholder groups: liquidity providers, traders, and ecosystem builders. Today, let's focus on number 2: the incentives for traders. 2⃣. Trading Incentives Trading fee rebates of up to 75% were offered to all traders on the GMX V2 markets. The goal was to provide users with a frictionless on-chain trading experience: low fees, fast execution, and self-custody. Note: the incentives were designed to encourage active participation with GMX v2 on Arbitrum, while guarding against abuse like wash-trading. The main results: Over its eight months of existence, GMX v2 has generated a total trading volume of $34.38B. From the start of the STIP campaign (the second week of November), v2 trading volume shows a clear upward trend. 🔹 Total trading volume increased by 28.22% during the incentive period. 🔹 The average daily volume on V2 during the campaign period was $197.84M. 🔹 March was the most successful month overall, with the STIP incentives boosting trading volume up to $7.74B, and $14.52M in protocol fees collected. During the entire STIP campaign, GMX processed over $29.72B in volume and generated $27.10M in fees. This was the highest fee generation across all perpetual DEXs, demonstrating the demand among traders and the product-market fit of v2. Conclusion: The above image illustrates the impact achieved by the STIP Trading Incentives. GMX has effectively utilised all the incentives and has been able to maintain mindshare across all the top Perp DEXs, with more volume, protocol fees collected, and daily active users. Despite fierce competition marked by aggressive liquidity mining and trading incentives campaigns, GMX has maintained its position as the leading protocol on Arbitrum in terms of Total Value Locked (TVL), fees, protocol revenue, and L2 gas consumption. The DeFi community’s continued trust in the platform has fueled the further adoption of Arbitrum and solidified its user base, capturing 50% of the total Perpetual (Perp) market. GMX’s TVL and activity have exhibited remarkable stickiness, consistently locking between 15% and 30% of all TVL on Arbitrum over the past year. Additionally, GMX has consistently ranked among the top perpetual protocols in all of DeFi! ____ Coming up: part 3, where we look into the results of the GMX Grants Program! You can access the full report on GMX's successful STIP program at: 👉 https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/leveraging-the-stip-grants-program-to-grow-the-gmx-and-arbitrum-defi-ecosystem/23100