GMGN, one of the crypto market’s prominent meme-coin trading terminals, has launched the public beta of its perpetual contracts product, expanding beyond the spot trading and token-discovery tools on which it built its user base.
Co-founder Haze announced the beta on September 21 and invited users to test the product and provide feedback. Screenshots accompanying the announcement showed a conventional derivatives interface containing candlestick charts, an order book and position-management tools, with SOL/USDC among the markets displayed. Reports differ over the breadth of the initial rollout. Crypto Briefing and reporting republished by CoinDesk describe SOL/USDC as the initial pair, while TronWeekly reports that BTC/USDC, ETH/USDC, SOL/USDC and ZEC/USDC are among the markets available. The product remains in public beta, meaning its market selection and specifications could change as GMGN expands testing.
GMGN Moves Beyond the Meme-Coin Trading Business
GMGN has established itself primarily as an on-chain trading terminal rather than a standalone exchange. Its existing platform combines token discovery, wallet analytics, security information, smart-money tracking, copy trading and trade execution across networks including Solana, BNB Chain, Base and Ethereum. Perpetuals represent a significant extension of that model. Instead of limiting users to buying and selling spot tokens, GMGN can now keep traders inside the same interface when they want leveraged exposure to major crypto assets. The company is not initially attempting to create an entirely independent derivatives liquidity network. Reporting on the beta says liquidity is being supplied by third-party providers, reducing the need for GMGN to bootstrap a deep order book from scratch.
Pricing also indicates an effort to attract active derivatives traders. The reported beta fee schedule charges takers 0.045% and makers 0.015%, considerably below the 1% transaction fee historically associated with GMGN’s spot trading terminal. That difference matters because perpetual traders can transact repeatedly and are considerably more sensitive to execution costs than users making occasional meme-coin purchases.
Perpetuals Become the Next Battleground for Trading Terminals
GMGN is entering derivatives as decentralized perpetuals are generating some of the crypto industry’s largest trading volumes and revenues. Hyperliquid alone generated approximately $429 million in protocol revenue between January 1 and September 15, according to CoinGecko data, illustrating the economics available to platforms that capture sustained derivatives activity. The competitive landscape is also changing. Trading terminals increasingly aim to combine discovery, spot execution and derivatives rather than specialize in a single market. Genius, for example, already integrates perpetual trading through Hyperliquid and Aster alongside its multi-chain spot interface.
That makes GMGN’s move strategically important. Meme-coin terminals typically acquire users through token discovery: traders arrive looking for newly launched assets, wallet activity, social signals and rapidly moving opportunities. Adding perpetuals creates another monetization layer without requiring those users to leave for a dedicated derivatives exchange. The expansion could also reduce GMGN’s dependence on meme-coin trading cycles. Spot meme activity can fluctuate sharply as speculative attention moves between chains and narratives, while perpetual futures generate trading activity in both rising and falling markets.
GMGN nevertheless faces a substantially different challenge in derivatives. Meme-coin discovery depends heavily on data, speed and user experience; perpetual trading additionally requires reliable execution, deep liquidity, accurate pricing, liquidation infrastructure and robust risk management. The public beta is therefore an important product expansion rather than evidence that GMGN has already become a major perpetuals venue. Its existing distribution gives it a pool of active on-chain traders to target, but whether that audience translates into sustained derivatives volume will depend on liquidity, execution quality and the breadth of markets GMGN can ultimately offer.