Hyperliquid and DEXs Break the Top 10 — Is the CEX Era Ending?

Centralized exchanges still dominate overall trading, processing nearly $80 trillion in spot and perpetual volume in 2025. Even so, decentralized exchanges have doubled their spot market share over two years and expanded their presence in perpetual futures fivefold, signaling that on-chain trading is moving beyond niche use.

DEX spot share rose from 6.9% in January 2024 to 13.6% in January 2026, with monthly DEX spot volume climbing from $95.86 billion to $231.29 billion. DEXs briefly reached 24.5% of spot activity in June 2025, a spike driven in part by Binance Alpha 2.0 routing trades through PancakeSwap, and have remained above 10% since early 2025 while centralized platforms maintained over $1 trillion in monthly spot volume.

The perpetuals market also shifted: total perp volume grew from $4.14 trillion to $7.24 trillion between January 2024 and January 2026, and perp DEX volume surged from $81.7 billion to $739.5 billion, lifting market share from 2.0% to 10.2%.

hyperliquid, dexs, cexs, pancakeswap, binance alpha, spot volume, perpetuals, perp volume, on-chain trading, market share