Original title: Where is Onchain Volume Rotating? (Jan24-Mar25)
Original author: @stacy_muur, member of CuratedCrypt0
Original compilation: Little Deep

Editor’s note: From January 2024 to March 2025, DeFi on-chain trading volume experienced a surge and a pullback, with DEX trading volume falling 35% after peaking at $380 billion in January 2025. Solana’s native DEX is on the rise, accounting for 5 of the top 10, and Hyperliquid has more than 60% of the perpetual contract market. Top DEXs such as Uniswap and PancakeSwap dominate about 40% of trading volume, with chain-level share volatility, Solana, Ethereum, and Base showing varying degrees of staying power, while CEXs still account for nearly 80% of spot trading. The future of DeFi depends on chains that solidify user habits, not just hype.

The following is the original content (the original content has been edited for ease of reading and comprehension):

Over the past 15 months, the map of DeFi liquidity has been redrawn from chain to chain, disappearing from hype-driven outliers and quietly concentrating where fundamentals are more important than noise.

TL; DR

· DEX trading volume hit an all-time high of $380 billion in January 2025, followed by a 35% decline in the following two months, signaling that a short-term top may have emerged.

· The top 10 DEXs now account for nearly 80% of activity; Uniswap and PancakeSwap alone account for about 40%.

· Solana’s native DEX quietly topped the list, with five of the top 10 and gaining market share due to memecoin-driven volume growth.

· Hyperliquid has disrupted the perpetual contract landscape, jumping from a newcomer to a dominant market share of more than 60% by March 2025.

All insights are based on publicly available data. Special thanks to DefiLlama for providing consistently high-quality statistics.

Cycles defined by surges and slowdowns

At the beginning of 2024, DEX trading volume performed strongly in March and May, followed by a slowdown in the middle of the year.

The situation turned sharply in the fourth quarter, with a surge in trading volumes in November and December, continuing to reach an explosive peak of $380 billion in January 2025.

But the rally was short-lived. By February, trading volume had plummeted 35% to $245 billion, ending a three-month vertical climb. The pullback set the tone for a more cautious second quarter.

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DEX Dominance: The head holds the power

The DEX landscape remains highly concentrated. The top 10 protocols now account for 79.5% of daily trading volume, with the top 5 alone controlling 59.1%.

Uniswap and PancakeSwap account for about 40% of all DEX trading volume, and are the only two protocols with cumulative trading volume exceeding one trillion dollars. Its dominance is built on first-mover advantage, multi-chain coverage, and deep liquidity.

Uniswap Labs has also launched Unichain, a dedicated Ethereum L2 based on Optimism Superchain, designed to provide fast, low-cost transactions with native multi-chain interoperability.

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Solana’s Quiet Rise

Solana’s rise is remarkable. Five of the top 10 DEXs are Solana-native: @orca_so, @MeteoraAG, @RaydiumProtocol, @Lifinity_IO, and @pumpdotfun.

Orca (8.02%) and Meteora (6.70%) alone contribute about 15% of global DEX activity.

This rise stems from low fees, fast block times, and sticky traffic from Solana’s meme coin culture. Pump.fun being in the top 10 is a clear reflection of this energy.

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Emerging Protocols: Fluid and Aerodrome

@0xfluid (7.09%) is the most capital-efficient DEX in the top 5. It is active on Ethereum, with a monthly trading volume of over $10 billion. Its launch on Arbitrum increased transaction volume from $426 million in February to $1.6 billion in March, showing rapid adoption.

@AerodromeFi, based on Base, reflects the growth of liquidity on Base L2.

While Hyperliquid doesn’t rank high in spot trading, it dominates the perpetual contract market, with over 60% of the market share.

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DEX market share by chain: kinetic energy is easy to obtain, but retention is rare

The last 15 months have shown that most chains attract attention, but few retain users. From January 2024 to March 2025, the share of chain-level DEXs has changed rapidly, with only a few maintaining real traction.

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Solana stands out the most. It climbed steadily in 2024, peaking at 45.8% in January 2025 due to the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coin craze. But by March, its share had halved to 21.5%. Despite this, its average share of 25.1% is still the highest in the entire chain.

Ethereum is trending in the opposite direction. With a share of about 32% at the start of 2024, it fell to 15.3% in January 2025 and rebounded to 26.4% in March, proving that its staying power is still alive even after losing momentum.

Base is the most stable climber. It increased from 3% in March 2024 to 12.4% in December and stabilized at 7.4% in March 2025, with an average of 6.6% during the period. There’s no hype, just slow, sticky growth.

BNB Chain maintains an average share of 14.7% and is always stable, with no skyrockets or crashes, sustained solely by retail traffic, and no breakthrough moments.

Arbitrum got off to a strong start at 16% but didn’t take off. By January 2025, it slipped to 4.8%, overtaken by Base and Solana.

Blast peaked at 42.3% in June 2024 and disappeared the following month – typical incentive-driven volume with no retention.

Conclusion: Chain-level DEX dominance fluctuates wildly. Solana surged, Ethereum recovered, Base slowly won ground, and the hype cycle quickly extinguished. The chain that sticks to it is not the most noisy, but the most used.

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CEXs continue to dominate spot volume

Despite the DEX explosion in early 2025, centralized exchanges (CEXs) continue to dominate the spot market. Even at the peak of the DEX in January, the CEX retained nearly 80% of the total trading volume.

While CEX dominance has dropped from 90% at the start of 2024 to a minimum of 79%, the overall pattern is clear: DEXs are growing, but CEXs are still the default venue for most traders.

Market share of perpetual contract agreements

In 2024, the on-chain perpetual contract landscape will be reversed.

More than two years after dYdX took the top spot, Hyperliquid rose to the occasion and redefined its dominance. It took the lead for the first time in February, lost briefly to @SynFuturesDefi in the middle of the year, regained the top spot in August and has held it so far. By March 2025, Hyperliquid accounted for nearly 59% of perpetual contract trading volume, establishing itself as the go-to venue for professional traders.

This rise has gained traction with products that are close to the CEX experience. In contrast, dYdX is rapidly declining. With a share of 13.2% falling from early 2024 to 2.7% in March 2025, users are switching to faster, cleaner, and more modern alternatives.

@JupiterExchange perpetual contracts took a different path, climbing to second place with an 8.8% share thanks to Solana’s native liquidity and spot DEX funnel. It scales rapidly but plateaus out after Hyperliquid. Others such as SynFutures, @Vertex_Protocol and @ParadexApp briefly show traction.

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Perpetual contract chain: The execution layer is rewritten in one cycle

The biggest shift in perpetual contract infrastructure over the past year has not been which protocol users prefer, but which chain they trust to execute.

In January 2024, Ethereum and Arbitrum controlled more than 65% of perpetual contract trading volume. But by March 2025, this drops to just 11.8%, replaced by a newer, faster execution tier.

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Leading the shift was Hyperliquid’s custom chain, which increased from 13.6% to 58.9% over the same period. In less than a year, it became the default perpetual contract execution environment, replacing the L1 and L2 that once defined the category. Not only is it faster, but it also offers the high reliability and low latency that professional traders need.

Solana also performed strongly, rising to nearly 16% by the end of 2024 with Jupiter and Phoenix, but eventually stabilized at 10-11%, failing to sustain breakout momentum. Base and ZKsync show vitality, peaking at around 6-7%, but not yet among the top tiers.

At the same time, Blast became a cautionary tale story: a one-month miracle of 18.8% in June 2024 that quickly disappeared. In the space driven by product quality and user retention, the hype is not sustainable. The new execution stack is clear – performance-first chains have reset the standard, and legacy infrastructure is no longer the default choice.

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The future of DeFi lies not in the number of chains, but in the solidification of narratives into user habits.

「Original link」

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