I remember buying the GMX ICO back in 2021. After watching Uniswap...

I remember buying the GMX ICO back in 2021.
After watching Uniswap change everything, it was obvious to me that perp DEXs were the next frontier.
I nailed the trade early and was an enthusiastic community member from day one.

GMX had everything you’d dream of at the time:
– zero VCs
– composability
– a real solution to the liquidity cold-start with GLP
– some of the earliest real DeFi fees
– ETH fee-share to token holders
– and a hardcore community that carried the project on its back

I also remember how painful it was to round-trip one of my largest positions during that period.
This was despite having what I considered a 'perfect' scorecard.

The lesson I took from GMX is simple and brutal:
'growth over everything else'.

GMX stopped growing.

And when growth stops, nothing else saves you

Not being VC-free
Not having a loyal community
Not elegant tokenomics
Not clever mechanism design
Not even decentralization

Contrast that with Binance.
It kept growing relentlessly. Users, liquidity, volume all increased and BNB kept climbing.
The divergence becomes obvious here:
(BNB vs GMX chart)

And the lesson hit even harder because one of my closest friends took the exact opposite bet in 2021.
I went all-in on the idealistic path: pure DeFi, pure principles.
He went all-in on BNB: pure realism, pure growth.
His portfolio multiplied several times.
Mine melted.

It was a rude awakening and a lesson I remind myself of every single day as an investor :

Growth over everything.
Nothing else matters.

Unfortunately most crypto teams run under the mantra
"Max extraction over everything"