2025 Epic Showdown: DEX vs CEX

Is DEX really about to replace CEX?

From a relatively low market share in 2020 to a rapid rise in trading volume this year, decentralized exchanges are gaining significant ground.

The DEX counterattack seems imminent, yet perhaps not as immediate as it appears.

Don't rush to celebrate the "victory of decentralization," nor dismiss it too quickly with outdated arguments about "complex processes" or "terrible user experience."

Read through this report first. The answer will reveal itself.

2025: The Year DEX Liquidity Took Off

Compared to the slow rise of the previous two years, 2025 marks the year DEX liquidity truly took off.

Whether measured by volume or growth rate, DEX trading has experienced a significant leap, with total trading volume approaching four times previous levels.

Breaking this down by quarter reveals that this growth didn't happen suddenly. The 2025 takeoff is essentially a continuation of the growth trend from Q4 2024.

It was precisely in Q4 2024 that DEX trading activity and liquidity began accumulating at an accelerated pace, which was then thoroughly amplified in the following year.

The inflection point for DEXs appeared in Q4 2024, while 2025 continued and magnified this trend.

Inflection Point Review: Q4 2024 Acceleration and 2025 Amplification

Quarterly Review: Who Led Each Quarter?

2024 Q4: Trend Initiation

Solana Ecosystem: For the first time on a quarterly basis, DEX trading volume on Solana exceeded Ethereum. Activity increased significantly, making it the core of liquidity for this phase.

AI Narrative & Launchpads: The AI narrative, combined with new token issuance platforms, generated a massive number of new trading pairs, significantly lifting DEX trading frequency and cumulative transaction scale.

Solana DEX: New token trading primarily occurred on Solana DEXs. Leveraging the "graduation" and "migration" processes of token issuance platforms like Pump.fun, Raydium took on substantial liquidity and trading volume for new tokens in Q4 2024, further consolidating its core position in Solana spot trading.

Hyperliquid: Leveraging its successful HYPE airdrop and product design advantages, Hyperliquid rapidly expanded its share in the decentralized perpetual contract market, with market dominance exceeding 55%.

2025 Q1: Ranking Shifts and Hotspot Rotation

Musical Chairs: The battle for the top spot in DEX trading entered a game of "musical chairs," with trading volume rankings of top ecosystems alternating repeatedly, making it difficult to distinguish a clear winner.

Meme Mania: During the phase of active Celebrity Meme and AI Meme trading, Solana ecosystem DEX trading volume expanded rapidly, gaining a temporary advantage in volume.

ETH Resurgence: As Meme coin trading heat gradually cooled from February to March, Ethereum successfully reclaimed the top spot in DEX trading volume in March, relying on more robust liquidity and structural capital return.

CEX Risk Exposure: Exposure to CEX custodial risks prompted some users to shift toward non-custodial, on-chain verifiable DEXs, driving a migration in trading behavior.

2025 Q2: Ecosystem Synergy and Capital Migration

PancakeSwap: Binance's launch of Alpha projects routed related trades to PancakeSwap, directly amplifying trading activity for BSC ecosystem DEXs. PancakeSwap became the biggest beneficiary of cross-ecosystem synergy, with quarterly trading volume surging by 539.2%.

Ethereum Pectra Upgrade: The formal activation of the Pectra upgrade triggered a strong market reaction. Ethereum surged nearly 44% during early Asian trading hours, marking its largest single-day gain since 2021. The market narrative subsequently shifted from Solana and Meme trading to broader ecosystem allocation.

Siphon Effect: As liquidity migration accelerated, competition between Solana and BSC presented a clear siphon effect, with capital and trading activity rotating rapidly between ecosystems.

2025 Q3: Heated Competition and Product Integration

CEX Recovery: CEX trading volume growth was more significant, driving a rebound in overall market trading activity.

Uniswap: Uniswap regained market share, tying with PancakeSwap as a leader in the DEX market.

Perp DEX Wars: Competition among Perp DEXs intensified. Challengers like Aster, Lighter, and edgeX expanded rapidly in trading volume and user scale, clashing head-on with the top platform, Hyperliquid. Market competition entered a white-hot stage. Platforms competed for active trading users through incentives like airdrops, points, and zero fees, further amplifying on-chain derivatives trading demand.

DEX Ecosystem: DEX aggregators and infrastructure continued improving, constantly enhancing user trading experience and lifting retention rates and trading stickiness.

Jupiter: Jupiter Lend attracted over $1 billion in deposits within just ten days of launch. Lending demand within the Solana ecosystem, previously relatively restricted, was quickly activated. Supported by Fluid's underlying lending architecture, Jupiter Lend's success further validated the strong attraction of the "DEX + Lending" model for capital.

2025 Q4: Extreme Market Disturbances and Sector Divergence

10.11 Liquidation Event: Extreme market conditions triggered by the "10.11" liquidation event pushed market trading volume higher in the short term, causing related data to appear temporarily elevated. This event exposed systemic risks at the CEX level, while chain loans and leverage liquidations also impacted DEXs.

Lighter and edgeX: As the market gradually restored confidence, the Perp DEX sector returned to its main growth trajectory. Platforms like Lighter and edgeX expanded rapidly in volume and users, narrowing the competitive gap with top platform Hyperliquid and pushing the Perp DEX market into high-intensity competition.

Aster: CZ publicly disclosed personal holdings of ASTER, after which Aster gained listing support from mainstream trading platforms like Binance and Robinhood. As a leading Perp DEX in the BSC ecosystem, Aster possesses the strength to compete with Solana-based heavyweights like Hyperliquid in the perpetual contract DEX sector.

HumidiFi: In the Spot DEX sector, Uniswap's market share has been declining since the end of Q3, with some volume being captured by newer platforms like HumidiFi. This reflects a shift in the spot DEX competitive landscape from a single leader to a more dispersed multi-platform structure.

Perp DEX: The Real Growth Engine of 2025

Having analyzed the top performers each quarter, let's further separate and examine Perp DEX and Spot DEX.

We specifically selected data from the last three years to observe the ratio of DEX/CEX perpetual contract trading volume.

This indicator trended upward across the board in 2025, whereas its overall performance in previous years was relatively average.

2025 became the year Perp DEX truly took off.

According to DeFiLlama statistics, the incremental trading volume of Perp DEXs in 2025 reached $7.348 trillion.

For comparison, the cumulative trading volume of perpetual contract DEXs from the beginning of 2021 to the end of 2024 was only $4.173 trillion.

This means Perp DEXs achieved net trading volume growth of approximately 176% in 2025 alone. The scale of new transaction volume in one year significantly exceeded the historical sum of the previous four years.

Starting from Q3 this year, trading volume began accelerating noticeably. With intensifying competition and the gradual maturation of multiple innovative products, the perpetual contract DEX sector as a whole began garnering sustained attention from market capital, with liquidity levels rising in tandem.

From early limited volume and scattered participation to being ignited simultaneously by market sentiment and capital structure, the market activity of Perp DEX is entering an entirely new magnitude.

Perp Volume: The Core Indicator of Capital Turnover Intensity

The strength of a Perp DEX lies in how fast it can turn over capital.

From an indicator perspective, Perp Volume (Perpetual Contract Trading Volume) is a crucial metric for measuring perpetual contract DEXs. It reflects the intensity of capital turnover and usage frequency.

Looking at the incremental Perp Volume for the year:

Hyperliquid and Lighter have sustained high-speed growth since the start of 2025, with trading activity and capital turnover efficiency amplifying in sync.

Aster surged to catch up after Q3, becoming one of the platforms with the fastest growth rates for the year.

In contrast, veterans dYdX and GMX did not make it to the top of the annual incremental list. Although their historical cumulative trading volumes remain substantial, their new trading volumes in 2025 were both below $100M, indicating a significantly slower overall growth pace.

Open Interest: Risk Exposure and Top-Heavy Concentration

For Perp DEXs, Open Interest (OI)—the sum of the nominal value of open contracts—is a core indicator that cannot be ignored.

To understand it simply: If Perp Volume is the flow, OI is the stock.

Perp Volume represents trading activity, while OI indirectly reflects whether capital is willing to keep positions on the platform.

As derivatives, the trading volume of perpetual contracts reflects liquidity and matching activity. However, to see how much capital truly stays in the arena, you need to look at OI.

From the platform side, OI reflects the protocol's capacity to bear risk and capital scale.

From the user side, OI embodies trading demand and capital stickiness.

Therefore, assuming Perp Volume already possesses sufficient liquidity and trading activity, we further screened the top five protocols with outstanding OI performance.

OI concentration is extremely high. The top five protocols absorbed the vast majority of open interest, showing a clear disconnect. The OI scale of the sixth-place protocol is roughly one-third of the fifth, creating a direct gap. Perp DEX capital is highly sensitive to depth, stability, and liquidation mechanisms, so positions tend to concentrate on a few mature platforms.

Post-10.11 Impact: Divergence in Perp DEX Recovery

When trading heat recedes and risk is released in concentrated fashion, the differentiation in Perp DEXs is no longer reflected in transaction scale but in capital retention and recovery resilience after the ATH (All-Time High) OI drawdown.

Aster: After completing market making in Q3, it demonstrated the strongest capital retention capability. After hitting an OI high on October 5, its retention rate relative to ATH OI remained above 72% for an extended period, even entering Q4. After the 10.11 event, its ecosystem recovery speed was also at a leading level, with the most robust recovery performance.

Lighter: The recovery pace was similarly fast. Current OI has recovered to approximately 87% of its ATH, indicating clear capital return.

Hyperliquid: Although its overall volume remains the largest, looking at ATH OI, open interest once retreated by more than 60%. As of now, OI has not yet returned to high levels, recovering only to about 61% of the average level prior to the 10.11 event, showing a noticeable weakening in overall performance.

Perp Revenue Performance: Growth Differences Across Protocols

Since protocols can attract so much capital, the key question arises: are they actually making money?

This brings us to protocol revenue.

We selected representative Perp DEX protocols to observe their performance in the 2025 cycle, starting from revenue performance and changing trends.

We selected four types of protocols with different positioning for a comparative analysis of their revenue performance:

• Hyperliquid: Representative leader of Specialized Perp DEXs

• Jupiter: Representative of Multi-business Platforms that include Perp DEX operations

• edgeX: Representative of Specialized New Competitors

• GMX: Representative of Veteran Perp DEX Protocols

Before analysis, let's segment the protocols:

Product Focus:

• Specialized Perp DEX

• Multi-business Platform (Perp is just one business line)

Lifecycle Stage:

• New Entrant

• Growth Stage Protocol

• Veteran Protocol

The core purpose of this classification is to answer one question: Under different positioning and stages, whose revenue growth momentum is the strongest?

It must be emphasized that merely observing the absolute growth scale of revenue values is insufficient to portray the true trends of 2025. Therefore, we selected December 2024 as the base period to observe monthly month-on-month revenue growth, more clearly capturing the speed and differences in protocol revenue growth.

From the heat map, it is clearly visible that July became a time node where the revenue performance of multiple protocols grew rapidly and simultaneously.

Specifically:

edgeX showed the most prominent increase within 2025. Although revenue growth slowed somewhat after September, looking at the annual average growth rate, edgeX still ranks at the forefront. As a startup Perp DEX that successfully broke through, its annual revenue performance remains eye-catching.

Hyperliquid has entered the growth stage. Revenue growth presents stable expansion under a high base, maintaining a high level overall, but marginal growth rates are tending to flatten.

Jupiter, assuming more of a role as a trading entry point and routing layer, often sees execution completed on underlying protocols, requiring fee revenue to be shared with the execution layer. Revenue growth is noticeably slower than the expansion of trading scale, remaining generally more stable.

GMX had an average revenue growth rate of approximately 22%. As a veteran protocol, growth mainly comes from the retention of existing users. If it can maintain this growth rate over the long term on its existing base scale, its business model still possesses long-term vitality.

Spot DEX: Liquidity Depth and Ecosystem Competition Landscape

Compared to the previous two years, the DEX/CEX spot trading volume ratio also trended significantly upward in 2025. It reached a temporary high in June and rose again in Q4.

TVL: Spot Liquidity Depth and Capital Investment Willingness

In the Spot DEX system, TVL (Total Value Locked) mainly comes from assets provided by LPs (Liquidity Providers) to trading pools. Higher TVL indicates more capital is willing to bear impermanent loss and contract risk, participate in market making, and earn fees or incentive yields. TVL better reflects capital's judgment of Spot DEX rules, risk structures, and long-term sustainability, making it suitable as a core reference dimension in spot DEX rankings.

Looking at TVL:

Uniswap remains firmly in first place with approximately $7.3 billion, maintaining a clear liquidity advantage among spot DEXs and continuing to act as the core trading hub of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Fluid and PancakeSwap form the second tier, with TVLs both above $2 billion. They benefited from cross-ecosystem expansion and increased BSC trading activity respectively, showing outstanding growth momentum for the year.

Curve and Raydium are located in the middle range. The former focuses on stablecoins and low-volatility asset trading, with stable TVL but a relatively restrained expansion pace. The latter is deeply bound to the Solana ecosystem, reflecting more of the liquidity changes within a single ecosystem.

Among the top ten protocols by average annual TVL in 2025, Fluid saw the most significant growth for the year, with Q3 TVL reaching approximately $5 billion. PancakeSwap also showed obvious expansion during the same period.

Trading Volume: The Collective Rise of the Solana

Here, we use the annual trading volume sum excluding flash loans as the statistical metric. Since flash loans often leverage large nominal transaction volumes with extremely small, instantaneous capital exposure, they easily inflate trading volume indicators. Therefore, they are excluded from the analysis to more accurately reflect real trading demand.

From the share distribution, Uniswap and PancakeSwap still occupy absolute dominance, with the two combined exceeding half the total. This indicates that mainstream spot DEX liquidity remains highly concentrated in a few top protocols.

It is worth noting that the combined share of Solana-based DEXs is already approaching the volume of Uniswap as a single protocol, indicating that the Solana ecosystem's overall competitiveness in spot DEX trading has significantly improved. However, its internal structure still presents a dispersed pattern across multiple protocols.

Clues Behind P/F Volatility: 2025 Spot DEX Chronicles

With such massive volume, as a key link in DeFi, are Spot DEXs actually making money? Let's look at the data.

Given that this article focuses on performance within the year, we discuss only temporary changes. At the same time, as multiple protocols in 2025 successively introduced token buybacks or burns, fee distributions, and structural adjustments, the explanatory power of FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) has declined.

Therefore, we select the P/F (Price-to-Fees) indicator of circulating market cap to measure how many valuation multiples the market is willing to pay for every unit of fee revenue.

P/F does not directly reflect profit levels but portrays the market's expectation of a Spot DEX's potential monetization capability under the current scale of economic activity.

To avoid the interference of absolute volume on observing trends of other protocols, Curve is not displayed in the current chart and is used only for background analysis. Simultaneously, due to the difficulty in clearly attributing value capture to the token layer for PumpSwap and Hyperliquid Spot, they are also excluded from this comparison.

Curve's P/F level remained in a relatively high range during the year, reaching a temporary peak of about 28 in May, then continuously falling back to around 7 starting in July. Compared to the level of about 10 at the beginning of the year, it dropped slightly overall.

It must be emphasized that Curve's P/F is significantly higher than other protocols mainly due to its long-maintained extremely low fee levels. Curve's pricing curve itself is specialized for stablecoins and low-volatility assets (such as inter-stablecoin or stETH/ETH LST trading), achieving extremely low slippage and high capital efficiency through highly optimized AMM design.

Furthermore, the YieldBasis new mechanism launched by Curve in 2025 further focuses on reducing LP impermanent loss and guaranteeing liquidity provider returns.

Regarding the P/F fluctuations of the protocols in the chart above in 2025, we have summarized important events that may have influenced the P/F for the top ten Spot DEXs, hoping this helps you review this innovative and vibrant track in 2025.

Conclusion

So, back to the initial question: Is DEX really going to replace CEX?

Whether it is the leap in trading volume or the rise in the DEX/CEX ratio during the year, both point to a fact: DEX has become a major transaction carrier that cannot be ignored.

Especially in the perpetual contract field, the transaction scale of Perp DEXs achieved historical amplification in 2025. Capital turnover efficiency and the capital bearing capacity of top platforms have also brought the market into a new magnitude.

But this does not imply a simple substitution. 2025 is more like the starting point of a "dual evolution": on one hand, DEXs are actively learning from CEXs, constantly moving closer in matching efficiency, trading experience, risk control, and product completeness. On the other hand, CEXs are also evolving toward the direction of DEXs, placing greater emphasis on asset self-custody, on-chain transparency, and verifiable settlement and liquidation mechanisms.

Ultimately, the relationship between DEX and CEX may not be a zero-sum game. The more likely picture is: Both exert their respective advantages at different levels and in different scenarios, jointly building the trading and clearing infrastructure of next-generation crypto finance.

Not replacement, but standing side by side; not confrontation, but co-construction.

In 2025, this trend has already drawn near. Can the day when a new order truly takes shape be far behind?

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