A retrospective of the 2025 final battle between DEX and CEX: Perp DEX is the biggest engine.

Written by: Cecelia, Deep Tide TechFlow

Is DEX really going to replace CEX?

From a relatively low market share in 2020 to a rapid increase in trading volume this year, the presence of decentralized exchanges is indeed becoming stronger.

Is the DEX comeback really not far away? But perhaps it's not that fast yet?

Don't rush to applaud the victory of decentralization, nor rush to reject it with old reasons such as complicated processes and poor user experience.

Read this report first, and you'll understand.

2025: The Year DEX Liquidity Takes Off

Compared to the slow rise in the previous two years, 2025 can be said to be the year when DEX liquidity truly takes off.

In terms of both size and growth rate, the trading volume of DEX has seen a significant leap, with the total trading volume nearly four times that of before.

Data source: dune.com (@coinwealthly)

If we break it down from a quarterly perspective, this round of growth did not happen suddenly.

The takeoff in 2025 is essentially a continuation of the growth trend in Q4 2024.

It was in the fourth quarter of 2024 that trading activity and liquidity on DEXs began to accumulate rapidly, and were amplified in the following year.

It can be said that the turning point for DEXs occurred in Q4 of 2024, and this trend continued and amplified in 2025.

A Look Back at the Turning Point: Acceleration in Q4 2024 and Amplification in 2025

Quarterly Review: Who Leads Each Quarter?

2024Q4: Trend Begins

• For the first time in a quarter, the trading volume of Solana's ecosystem DEXs surpassed Ethereum, with a significant increase in activity, making it the core of liquidity in this phase.

• AI-powered narratives, combined with new coin issuance platforms, continuously generate a large number of new trading pairs, significantly increasing the trading frequency and cumulative trading volume of DEXs.

• Solana DEX: New coin trading mainly takes place on Solana DEX. Relying on the "graduation" and "migration" processes of token issuance platforms such as Pump.fun, Raydium took over a large amount of subsequent liquidity and trading for new coins in Q4 2024, further consolidating its core position in Solana spot trading.

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

2025Q1: Ranking Shifts and Hot Topic Rotation

• The battle for the top DEX has entered a "musical chairs" game, with the top ecosystems seeing their DEX trading volume rankings constantly changing hands and remaining neck and neck.

• During periods of high trading activity and dense narratives in celebrity and AI memes, the trading volume on Solana's DEX ecosystem rapidly increased, temporarily gaining a trading volume advantage.

• As the popularity of Meme coin trading gradually cooled down in February and March, Ethereum successfully regained the top spot in DEX trading volume in March thanks to its more stable liquidity and structured capital inflows.

• CEX custody risks exposed: Some users have begun to try to switch to non-custodial, on-chain verifiable DEXs, driving the migration of trading behavior.

2025Q2: Ecological Synergy Amplification and Capital Migration

• PancakeSwap: Binance's Alpha project routed related transactions to PancakeSwap, directly amplifying trading activity across the BSC ecosystem's DEXs. In this process, PancakeSwap became the biggest beneficiary of cross-ecosystem collaboration, experiencing a quarterly surge of 539.2% in trading volume.

• The official activation of the Ethereum Pectra upgrade triggered a strong market reaction. Ethereum surged nearly 44% in early Asian trading, marking its largest single-day gain since 2021. The market focus subsequently shifted from Solana and Meme trading to broader ecosystem integration.

• As liquidity migration accelerates, the competition between Solana and BSC exhibits a clear siphon effect, with funds and trading activity rapidly rotating between different ecosystems.

2025Q3: Intense Competition and Product Integration

• The growth in trading volume on CEXs was more significant, driving a rebound in overall market trading activity.

• Uniswap: Uniswap regained some market share and became one of the leaders in the DEX market, alongside PancakeSwap.

• Competition within the Perp DEX market has intensified significantly. Challengers such as Aster, Lighter, and edgeX are rapidly expanding in trading volume and user base, directly clashing with leading platform Hyperliquid, pushing market competition into a fierce phase. Platforms are employing incentive mechanisms such as airdrops, points, and zero transaction fees to attract active trading users, further amplifying the demand for on-chain derivatives trading.

• DEX Ecosystem: DEX aggregators and infrastructure are continuously being improved, enhancing the user trading experience and increasing retention and trading stickiness.

• Jupiter: Jupiter Lend attracted over $1 billion in deposits in just ten days after its launch. Previously limited lending demand within the Solana ecosystem was rapidly activated. Supported by Fluid's underlying lending architecture, Jupiter Lend's explosive growth further validates the strong appeal of the DEX + lending model to capital.

2025Q4: Extreme Market Fluctuations and Sector Differentiation

• The extreme market conditions triggered by the 1011 liquidation event boosted trading volume in the short term, resulting in temporarily elevated data. This event exposed systemic risks at the centralized exchange (CEX) level, while the chain lending and leveraged liquidation impacted the decentralized exchange (DEX).

• Lighter and EdgeX: As market confidence gradually recovers, the Perp DEX sector is back on the growth trajectory. Platforms like Lighter and EdgeX are rapidly expanding in trading volume and user base, narrowing the competitive gap with leading platform Hyperliquid and propelling the Perp DEX market into a phase of intense competition.

• Aster: CZ publicly disclosed his personal holdings in ASTER, and subsequently, Aster received listing support from mainstream trading platforms such as Binance and Robinhood. As a leading Perp DEX in the BSC ecosystem, Aster has the strength to compete head-to-head with leading platforms such as Solana's Hyperliquid in the perpetual contract DEX sector.

• HumidiFi: In the spot DEX sector, Uniswap's market share has been declining since the end of the third quarter, with some trading volume being captured by newcomers like HumidiFi, reflecting that the competitive landscape of spot DEXs is evolving from a single dominant player to a multi-platform fragmentation.

After analyzing the best-performing dark horses of each quarter, let's take a closer look at Perp DEX and Spot DEX separately.

Perp DEX: The True Incremental Engine of 2025

Data source: CoinGecko

This section specifically selects data from the past three years to observe the proportion of perpetual contract trading volume on DEX/CEX.

As can be seen, this indicator will rise across the board in 2025, while its overall performance was relatively average in the preceding period.

2025 will be the year that Perp DEX truly takes off.

According to DeFiLlama data, the trading volume of Perp DEX increased by $7.348 trillion in 2025.

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

In other words, Perp DEX achieved a net trading volume increase of approximately 176% in the single year of 2025. The increase in trading volume in one year significantly exceeded the total of the previous four years.

Meanwhile, trading volume has accelerated significantly since the third quarter of this year. With intensified competition and the gradual maturation of several innovative products, the perpetual contract DEX sector as a whole has begun to attract sustained market attention, leading to a corresponding increase in liquidity.

Data source: DeFiLlama

From its early days of limited size and fragmented participation, to being ignited by both market sentiment and capital structure, the market activity of Perp DEX is entering a completely new level.

Perp Volume: A core indicator of capital turnover intensity

Data source: DeFiLlama

The strength of Perp DEX lies in how quickly it allows funds to circulate.

From a metrics perspective, Perp Volume (perpetual contract trading volume) is an important indicator for measuring perpetual contract DEXs.

It can reflect the intensity of capital turnover and the frequency of its use.

Looking at the increase in Perp Volume this year:

• Among them, Hyperliquid and Lighter have continued to grow rapidly since 2025, with transaction activity and capital turnover efficiency increasing in tandem.

• Aster, however, rallied after the third quarter, becoming one of the fastest-growing platforms of the year.

• In contrast, established players like dYdX and GMX did not rank among the top performers in terms of year-to-date growth. Although their historical cumulative trading volume remains considerable, their new trading volume in 2025 is less than 100 million, indicating a significantly slower overall growth rate.

Open Interest: Risk Exposure and Concentration of Top Players

For Perp DEX, Open Interest (the sum of the notional value of open contracts) is a core metric that cannot be ignored.

In short: if Perp Volume is traffic, then OI is inventory.

Perp Volume represents trading activity, while OI indirectly reflects whether funds are willing to keep their positions on this platform.

As a derivative, the trading volume of perpetual contracts reflects liquidity and matching activity more; however, the actual amount of funds remaining in the market depends on the open interest (OI).

From the platform's perspective, OI reflects the protocol's ability to bear risk and the scale of funds;

From the user's perspective, OI reflects transaction demand and fund stickiness.

Therefore, given that Perp Volume already has sufficient liquidity and trading activity, we further selected the top five protocols with outstanding OI performance.

Data source: DeFiLlama

Open interest (OI) is highly concentrated. The top five protocols absorb the vast majority of open interest, creating a significant gap. The sixth-ranked OI has about one-third the size of the fifth-ranked one, widening the gap considerably. Funds on Perp DEX are highly sensitive to depth, stability, and liquidation mechanisms, with positions tending to concentrate on a few established platforms.

Differences in Perp DEX's Repair Performance After the 10.11 Impact

When trading enthusiasm subsides and risks are concentratedly released, the differentiation of Perp DEX is no longer reflected in trading volume, but in the retention of funds and resilience of recovery after the ATH OI pullback.

Aster:

• After building market momentum in the third quarter, it demonstrated the strongest ability to retain funds.

After reaching its peak on October 5, its retention rate relative to ATH OI remained above 72% even in the fourth quarter; after the 1011 incident, its ecosystem recovery speed was also at the forefront, and its recovery performance was the most stable.

Lighter:

• The recovery pace is also relatively fast, with the current OI recovering to about 87% of ATH, indicating a clear return of funds.

Hyperliquid:

• Although it still has the largest overall volume, the open interest in ATH OI once fell by more than 60%. As of now, OI has not returned to its high level, only recovering to about 61% of the average level before the 1011 event, and its overall performance has weakened significantly.

Perp Revenue Performance: Growth Differences Among Different Positioning Protocols

Given that the agreements have attracted so much funding, the key question is: are they actually profitable?

This brings us back to the revenue from the agreement.

Therefore, we will select the representative Perp DEX protocol below.

Based on income performance and trends, observe their performance in the 2025 cycle.

This section selects four different types of agreements and compares their revenue performance:

• Hyperliquid: A leading representative of specialized Perp DEX

• Jupiter: A representative of multi-service platforms that include Perp DEX services.

• edgeX: As a representative of specialized new competitors

• GMX: As a long-established representative of the Perp DEX protocol

Before the analysis, let's segment the market for the agreement:

First, the degree of product focus:

• Specialized Perp Dex

• Multi-service platform (Perp is only one of the service lines)

Second, the life cycle stage:

• New entrants

• Maturity Agreement

• Old-fashioned agreements

The core purpose of this division is to answer one question:

Under different positioning and stages, whose income growth momentum is the strongest?

It is important to emphasize that simply observing the absolute growth in income is insufficient to depict the true trend of change in 2025.

Therefore, we selected December 2024 as the base period to further observe the month-on-month revenue growth in order to more clearly capture the growth rate and differences in contract revenue.

Data source: DeFiLlama

The heatmap clearly shows that July was a period in which multiple agreements saw rapid growth in revenue.

Specifically:

• edgeX saw the most significant growth in 2025.

Despite a slowdown in revenue growth after September, edgeX still ranks among the top performers in terms of average annual growth rate. As a successful startup DEX, Perp's revenue performance remains impressive for the year.

• Hyperliquid has entered the growth stage, with revenue growth showing stable expansion from a high base, maintaining an overall high level, but the marginal growth rate is trending towards flattening.

• Because Jupiter primarily acts as a transaction gateway and routing layer, its transactions are often completed at the underlying protocol level, and its transaction fee revenue needs to be shared with the execution layer. Revenue growth is significantly slower than the expansion of transaction volume, remaining relatively stable overall.

• GMX's average revenue growth rate is approximately 22%. As an established protocol, growth primarily stems from user retention. If it can maintain this growth rate on its existing user base, its business model will remain viable in the long term.

Spot DEX: Liquidity Depth and Ecosystem Competition Landscape

Data source: CoinGecko

Compared to the previous two years, the DEX/CEX spot trading volume ratio also saw a significant increase in 2025. It reached a peak in June and rebounded again in the fourth quarter.

TVL: Spot liquidity depth and willingness to invest funds

In the Spot DEX system, TVL primarily originates from assets provided by LPs to the trading pool. A higher TVL indicates that more funds are willing to bear impermanent loss and contract risk, participate in market making, and earn transaction fees or incentive rewards. TVL better reflects funds' judgment on Spot DEX rules, risk structure, and long-term sustainability, thus making it suitable as one of the core reference dimensions in spot DEX rankings.

Data source: Tokenterminal

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

Fluid and PancakeSwap form the second tier, with TVL exceeding $2 billion each. They have benefited from cross-ecosystem expansion and increased BSC transaction activity, respectively, and have shown outstanding growth momentum this year.

Curve and Raydium are in the middle range. Curve mainly focuses on trading stablecoins and low-volatility assets, while its TVL is stable but its expansion pace is relatively restrained. Raydium, on the other hand, is deeply integrated with the Solana ecosystem and reflects the liquidity changes of a single ecosystem more.

Among the top ten deals by average annual TVL in 2025, Fluid saw the most significant growth this year, with its TVL reaching approximately $5 billion in the third quarter. PancakeSwap also experienced significant expansion during the same period.

Trading Volume: The Rise of the Solana Group

Data source: DeFiLlama

This analysis uses the total annual transaction volume excluding flash loans as the statistical standard. Flash loans often leverage a large nominal transaction volume with a very small, instantaneous funding exposure, which can easily inflate transaction volume indicators. Therefore, they are excluded from the analysis to more accurately reflect the true transaction demand.

In terms of market share distribution, Uniswap and PancakeSwap still hold an absolute dominant position, accounting for more than half of the total, indicating that the liquidity of mainstream spot DEXs is still highly concentrated in a few leading protocols.

It's worth noting that the combined market share of Solana-based DEXs is approaching that of Uniswap alone, indicating a significant improvement in the overall competitiveness of the Solana ecosystem in spot DEX trading; however, it still exhibits a fragmented structure with multiple protocols.

Clues Behind P/F Fluctuations: Spot DEX Milestones of 2025

Given its massive size, is Spot DEX, a key component of DeFi, actually profitable? Let's take a look at the data.

Given that this article focuses on performance within the year, it only discusses changes in stages. Meanwhile, in 2025, many protocols will introduce token buybacks or burns, fee distribution, and structural adjustments, thus reducing the explanatory power of FDV.

Therefore, the P/F ratio based on market capitalization is used here to measure how much valuation multiple the market is willing to pay for each unit of transaction fee.

The P/F ratio does not directly reflect profit levels, but rather depicts the market's expectation of Spot DEX's potential liquidity under the current scale of economic activity.

Data source: Tokenterminal

To avoid the absolute size of these protocols interfering with the observation of other protocol trends, Curve is not shown in the current chart and is only used for background analysis. Additionally, PumpSwap and Hyperliquid Spot are not included in this comparison because their performance cannot be clearly attributed to token-level value capture mechanisms.

Curve's P/F ratio remained relatively high throughout the year, reaching a peak of approximately 28 in May, before gradually declining to around 7 from July onwards. This represents a slight decrease compared to the level of approximately 10 at the beginning of the year.

It is important to emphasize that Curve's P/F is significantly higher than other protocols, mainly due to its consistently low transaction fees. Curve's pricing curve is specifically designed for stablecoins and low-volatility assets (such as stablecoin-to-stablecoin and LST transactions like stETH/ETH), achieving extremely low slippage and high capital efficiency through a highly optimized AMM design.

In addition, Curve's new YieldBasis mechanism, launched in 2025, further focuses on reducing impermanent loss for LPs and protecting the returns of liquidity providers.

Regarding the changes in P/F of the above protocol in 2025, we have compiled a list of important events in the top ten Spot DEXs that have a certain impact on the P/F changes, hoping to help you review this innovative and dynamic track in 2025.

So, back to the original question, is DEX really going to replace CEX?

Both the surge in trading volume and the rise in the DEX/CEX ratio this year suggest one fact: DEX has become an indispensable major trading platform.

Especially in the perpetual contract sector, Perp DEX saw a historic increase in trading volume in 2025. Its capital turnover efficiency and the financial capacity of leading platforms also brought the market into a new level.

However, this does not mean a simple replacement. 2025 is more like the starting point of a "two-way evolution": on the one hand, DEXs are actively learning from CEXs, constantly catching up in terms of matching efficiency, trading experience, risk control, and product completeness; on the other hand, CEXs are also evolving towards DEXs, placing greater emphasis on asset self-custody, on-chain transparency, and verifiable settlement and clearing mechanisms.

Ultimately, the relationship between DEXs and CEXs may not be a zero-sum game. A more likely scenario is that both will leverage their respective strengths at different levels and in different scenarios to jointly build the next generation of trading and clearing infrastructure for crypto finance.

It's not about replacing, but standing shoulder to shoulder; it's not about confrontation, but building together.

2025, this trend is already approaching, and how far away is the day when a new order truly takes shape?