What Is MUX Protocol? The Perpetual Aggregator, Fees and How It Works

The aggregator compares connected perpetual venues and sends your position to one or more of them ³. It considers four things:

• whether the venue lists the market;
• whether it has enough liquidity for your size;
• the "composite" cost, meaning the fees, spread, price impact, margin requirements and liquidation terms combined;
• your own settings. Any source can be switched off.

MUX's docs list its own V3, V1 and Degen pools, GMX V1 and V2, and Gains Network's gTrade as sources ¹. That list should be read with care. GMX permanently stopped new v1 positions on Arbitrum after its July 2025 exploit ¹⁶, so routes depend on what each venue currently accepts.

The aggregator can also post extra margin on your behalf on the underlying venue. This lets you reach a higher leverage, or a lower liquidation price, than that venue would allow on its own ³.

The practical consequence is that fees and liquidation rules follow the venue your order lands on, not MUX's own schedule ⁴⁵. For how market, limit and trigger orders differ, see crypto order types.

MUX also runs its own pools, where traders trade against pooled liquidity at an oracle price rather than against an order book ²:

• V1 launched in August 2022 with a single pool (MUXLP). The trade tutorial lists ETH, BTC, AVAX, BNB and FTM markets ²¹¹.
• V3 spreads liquidity across several "elemental" pools (MUX3LP), each with its own collateral and long/short exposure. Supported collateral includes stablecoins, yield-bearing tokens and restaking tokens. V3 adds cross and isolated margin and pricing from Chainlink Data Streams plus MUX's own "Dark Oracle". MUX advertises zero price impact on major markets ².
• Degen is a V1-based pool for long-tail assets ¹.

MUX states that V1 and the aggregator processed more than $48 billion in volume by September 2024 ². That is a company figure, not independently checked here.

On MUX's own V1 and V3 pools, the docs list the following ⁴:

Illustrative example (assumptions stated): a $10,000 position opened and closed on a MUX native pool pays $6 + $6 = $12 in position fees. Borrowing costs and gas come on top, and both depend on how long the position stays open and on pool utilization. Routes through GMX or gTrade use those venues' fee schedules instead ⁴.

On MUX's own pools, the maintenance margin is 0.5% of position value. In other words, a position is liquidated once its effective leverage passes 200x, or earlier once accrued fees are counted ⁵. Any margin left after the liquidation fee is returned to the trader ⁴⁵.

MCB is the main token. Its supply is capped at 4,803,144, and 1 million of that is reserved for MUX vesting. MCB exists on Arbitrum, Ethereum and BNB Chain ⁶.

veMUX. Locking MCB or MUX for between two weeks and four years gives veMUX. A four-year lock earns 1 veMUX per token, and a one-year lock earns 0.25 ⁶.

MUX. MUX is a non-transferable reward token issued at 1,000 a day. It can be locked for veMUX or vested into MCB over one year ⁶⁷.

Where fees go ⁷:

• 85% of native-pool income goes to liquidity providers, adjusted for the share of protocol-owned liquidity.
• veMUX holders receive the remainder in ETH every Thursday (UTC), plus all referral rebates the aggregator earns from integrated venues.

The docs reviewed describe this fee-sharing model, not a token buyback-and-burn programme. Price data for MCB is outside this page's scope.

Custody. MUX is non-custodial: positions sit in smart contracts tied to your wallet.

Control. The contracts are controlled by a MUX DAO multi-sig ⁸:

• Ordinary changes, such as fee rates, margin rates, new assets and oracle addresses, take effect after a 48-hour timelock.
• Emergency actions, including pausing the protocol, take effect immediately.
• Token-holder voting is described as a future phase and is not yet active ⁸.

Audits and bounty. Published audits cover V3 (Guardian), the aggregator (SolidProof, December 2022) and V1 (CertiK) ⁹. A bug bounty runs on Immunefi ¹⁰. Audits lower risk but do not guarantee contract safety.

Main risks:

• Leverage and liquidation.
• Oracle dependence.
• Exposure to third-party venues used in routing.
• A small, concentrated liquidity base (about $9.6 million, roughly 90% of it on Arbitrum, as of October 23, 2026) ¹².
• Phishing sites copying the interface (see crypto phishing).

Support. Support runs through Discord tickets ¹¹. MUX never needs your seed phrase.

MUX began as MCDEX. Token Terminal names Jean Miao and Liu Jie as MCDEX's founders ¹³. The project relaunched under the MUX name in August 2022 alongside V1 ²¹³, and CoinMarketCap still lists the token under the MCDEX/MCB name with a rebrand notice ¹⁴. No incorporated company, headquarters or governing law was found in the documentation reviewed.