The present understanding of nonperturbative ground states in the fractional quantum Hall effect is based on effective theories of the Jain \composite fermion" excitations. We review the approach based on matrix variables, i.e. D0 branes, originally introduced by Susskind and Polychronakos. We show that the Maxwell-Chern-Simons matrix gauge theory provides a matrix generalization of the quantum Hall effect, where the composite-fermion construction naturally follows from gauge invariance. The matrix ground states obtained by suitable projections of higher Landau levels are found to be in one-to-one correspondence with the Laughlin and Jain hierarchical states. The matrix theory possesses a physical limit for commuting matrices that could be reachable while staying in the same phase.