Gains Network (gTrade): How the Decentralized Leveraged Trading Platform Works

Gains Network is the protocol and community behind Gains, a trading venue that began on Polygon. It expanded to Arbitrum in January 2023, to Base in September 2024 and to MegaETH in February 2026 ¹⁴. Its GNS token started life as GFARM2 on Ethereum before a 1:1000 migration to Polygon ¹¹. Long-term plans describe Gains Network becoming a DAO governed by GNS holders ¹.

The website is run by Ingenium Labs Foundation under Panama law. The terms state that the foundation "does not own, operate or control" the Gains Network smart contracts and never holds users' keys or tokens ¹³. No headquarters for Gains Network itself is published.

1. Connect and fund. Connect a self-custody wallet on a supported chain and hold the chain's gas token plus a supported collateral. Arbitrum takes USDC, WETH or GNS; Base takes USDC or BtcUSD; Polygon takes USDC or WETH; MegaETH takes USDm ²³. DAI markets are close-only ³.
2. Open a position. You pick a pair, a direction and leverage. A market order is sent in one transaction and filled in a second one, once at least three Chainlink oracle nodes return a price. If the fill would exceed your max slippage, the order is cancelled ⁴.
3. While open. Your trade accrues holding fees. A borrowing fee goes to the vault, and a funding fee passes between longs and shorts and can be earned rather than paid ⁵. Forex, stock, index and commodity pairs execute only during their market hours ⁷.
4. Close or get liquidated. A position is liquidated when losses, fees included, reach most of the collateral: 90% at low leverage, less at high leverage. Your loss is capped at the collateral you posted. Gains' docs give an example: a 5x BTC long is liquidated after a move of about 18% against it ⁷.

The oracle design has no circuit breaker. Prices can move without limit and pairs are not auto-halted after big moves, although individual pairs can be disabled for new trades ⁴⁶. See our guides to order types and slippage.

Fees are charged on the full position size (collateral × leverage), on both opening and closing ⁵. As of October 23, 2026:

Worked example from the docs: 250 USDC at 10x on a non-core crypto pair is a 2,500 USDC position. The 0.06% opening fee is 1.5 USDC, leaving 248.5 USDC as collateral ⁵. On top of this come price impact (based on liquidity, open-interest skew and trade size), hourly holding fees, the closing fee and gas. Gas is covered by Gains when you trade from its gasless instant wallet ⁵.

Fee revenue is split 76% to the DAO, 15% to vault liquidity providers, 5% to referrals and 4% to the bots that trigger limit orders ⁵. Staking GNS can earn fee discounts of up to 50% ¹¹.

Every trade is settled against a gToken vault in its collateral: gUSDC, gETH, gGNS, gBTCUSD and the legacy gDAI ⁹. When traders lose, the vault gains. When traders win, the vault pays out. Vault depositors earn their share of fees in return. Each gToken's value moves with accumulated fees and with traders' net profit or loss, measured in epoch snapshots. Losses absorbed beyond 100% collateralization draw down an over-collateralization buffer first ⁹.

Vault depositors take the other side of every trader. A sustained run of trader profits would reduce the gToken's value. Vault contracts are upgradeable, but upgrades sit behind a 14-day timelock, and parameter changes behind 3-day or 14-day timelocks depending on their impact ¹⁰.

GNS is used for revenue sharing, as a backstop for the vaults and for fee discounts ¹¹. In June 2026 a governance vote ("Make Gains Great Again") paused buyback & burn and GNS staking rewards. That revenue now goes to a growth and marketing treasury. The DAO can restore both once GNS holds a 30-day average price of $20 or more ¹¹¹². The docs state that buying GNS carries no promise of price appreciation ¹.

• Non-custodial, no KYC. Funds stay in your wallet until a trade opens. Region checks apply only to opening trades and never block closing a position or lock funds ⁸.
• Geographic limits. The terms prohibit US persons regardless of IP address, prohibit VPN use to hide a US location and exclude sanctioned persons. The app separately blocks some asset classes, such as stocks and indices in the US and OFAC regions ⁸¹³.
• Leverage risk. High leverage puts the liquidation price very close to the entry price. The collateral can be lost quickly ⁷.
• Oracle and contract risk. Prices depend on the Chainlink node set. The contracts are upgradeable with timelocks ⁴¹⁰. No audit list is published in the docs. DefiLlama links a CertiK project page for Gains Network ¹⁴.

Gains differs from order-book perps such as Hyperliquid and is closer in design to pool-based venues like GMX. Both models are covered in our DEX explainer.