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Centralized exchanges (CEX) still control the lion’s share of cryptocurrency liquidity. However, the balance of power has begun to shift with its share of the spot market doubling over the past two years while expanding its presence in perpetual futures fivefold.
The data suggests that chain commerce is no longer a niche alternative. Rather, it is emerging as a structural competitor to central locations.
Influence of earning digital dividends: Hyperliquid, Uniswap and PancakeSwap enter the top 10 exchanges
Second To report CEX & DEX trading activity for 2026 by CoinGecko CEXs handled nearly $80 trillion in spot and perpetual trading volume in 2025 alone. While this highlights their continued dominance, DEX adoption is also accelerating rapidly.
The market share of Spot DEX increased from 6.9% in January 2024 to 13.6% in January 2026. In absolute terms, the volume of monthly cash trading more than doubled, increasing from $95.86 billion to $231.29 billion.
At its peak in June 2025, cryptocurrencies represented 24.5% of Spot business activity. According to the report, this success was partly driven by Binance Alpha 2.0 trades routed via PancakeSwap.
Although this growth was temporary, the share of DEX has always been above 10% since the beginning of 2025. This suggests that the demand for on-chain execution has begun to stabilize rather than disappear.
However, centralized exchanges continued to stabilize liquidity, maintaining a monthly spot volume of more than $1 trillion throughout the period.
The Enduring Series: A breakthrough moment for masterclass players with Hyperliquid In the Lead
as well as Perpetual futures market By 75% in two years, it will grow from $4.14 trillion in January 2024 to $7.24 trillion in January 2026. In this growth, the DEXs have achieved their greatest gains.
- Author’s DEX volume increased eightfold from $81.7 billion to $739.5 billion
- This raised its market share from 2.0% to 10.2%.
In other words, one out of every ten dollars traded in… Perpetual digital currency It now flows through decentralized infrastructure.
One of the main drivers was the amazing performance of Hyperliquid, which became the only exchange to rank in the top 10 exchanges for workers.
In six months between August 2025 and January 2026, Hyperliquid recorded a cumulative trading volume of $1.59 trillion . This placed them alongside the long-time central giants.
On the immediate side, I entered Uniswap PancakeSwap also top 10 exchanges by volume, each with more than $0.5 trillion in cumulative six-month trading activity.
A few years ago, the idea of ​​several classifications DEXs are among the largest exchanges in the industry It seems unlikely.
Code listings reveal the structural gap
The report also highlights clear differences in code coverage. Among the centralized platforms, it has peaked MEXC and Gate.io List 1,281 and 1,273 tokens respectively in 13 months. The average number of new ads was just under 100 per month.
However, this represents only 0.01% of the 24.04 million tokens generated during that period.
In contrast, Uniswap only listed 13.69 million tokens, reflecting the permissionless nature of the decentralized infrastructure.
This suggests a fundamental divergence, with CEXs positing scarcity and DEXs positing abundance.
$2.4 billion in security losses
However, rapid growth is not without cost. Cryptocurrency exchanges have recorded more than $2.4 billion in hack-related losses in just over a year.
Central Places accounted for more than $ 2 billion, of which 71% of An exploit in Bybit in February 2025.
Dividend funds saw generally smaller losses, with the biggest draw at $223 million. This was usually related Vulnerability of the smart contract And the manipulation of oracles.
The broader takeaway from the CoinGecko report is that while CEXs are now dominant, decentralized competitors are closing the gap between the spot and derivatives markets.
With a DEX market share of more than 10% and the emergence of institutional platforms on the chain, the shift towards decentralized liquidity has become measurable.
