The Migration of On-Chain Liquidity: 15 Months of Ups and Downs, Who Stands Out After the Hype Ebbs?

By Stacy Muur

Compilation: Tim, PANews

Over the past 15 months, the DeFi liquidity landscape has been reshaped across chains, with projects driven by the hype fading out of the stage and liquidity quietly concentrating on strong fundamentals rather than market hype.

Core insights

• After hitting an all-time high of $380 billion in January 2025, DEX trading volume fell by 35% in the following two months, suggesting that a short-term peak may have formed in January.
• Currently, the top 10 DEXs account for nearly 80% of the total trading volume; Uniswap and PancakeSwap alone account for about 40% of the share.
• Solana-based DEXs have quietly dominated the charts, with 5 spots in the top 10, and their market share growth is mainly driven by the trading volume brought about by the meme coin boom.
• Hyperliquid has revolutionized the landscape of perpetual contracts, rising from a rookie in the industry to capturing more than 60% of the market share by March 2025.

All insights are based on publicly available data. Special thanks to DefiLlama for the high-quality statistics that continue to provide.

A cycle defined by surges versus slowdowns

At the beginning of 2024, DEX trading volumes performed strongly in March and May, before gradually slowing down by the middle of the year.

The situation changed dramatically in the fourth quarter, with a surge in trading volume in November and December, and this momentum continued into January 2025, when it reached an explosive peak of $380 billion.

However, the rally was short-lived. By February, market volume had plummeted to $245 billion, and the 35% precipitous drop ended a three-month vertical spike. The pullback set the tone for a more cautious second quarter.

DEX Dominance: Head Protocol Takes the Lead

The DEX market landscape remains highly concentrated. Currently, the top 10 protocols account for 79.5% of the daily trading volume, while the top five alone account for 59.1%.

Uniswap and PancakeSwap account for about 40% of the DEX's trading volume, and are the only two platforms to date with cumulative trading volume exceeding one trillion US dollars. Their leading position stems from first-mover advantage, broad support for the multi-chain ecosystem, and deep liquidity.

Uniswap Labs also launched Unichain, an Ethereum layer 2 network built on top of Optimism Superchain. The chain is designed to enable fast, low-cost transactions through native multi-chain interactions.

Solana's quiet rise

Strikingly, Solana's position in the DEX space is becoming increasingly prominent. There are currently five of the top 10 DEXs: Orca, Meteora, Raydium, Lifinity, and Pump.fun. It's all based on Solana's native development.

Orca (8.02%) and Meteora (6.70%) alone account for about 15% of global decentralized exchange activity.

This growth is due to low GAS fees, fast block times, and the Solana Meme coin boom. Pump.fun soaring into the top 10 is a testament to this fiery spotlight.

Emerging Protocols: Fluid vs. Aerodrome

Fluid (7.09%) is the most capital-efficient platform among the top five DEXs. The protocol is active on Ethereum, with more than $10 billion in monthly liquidations. It has been particularly impressive since the launch of the Arbitrum ecosystem, with transaction volumes surging from $426 million in February to $1.6 billion in March, demonstrating that its adoption rate is far faster than the industry average.

Aerodrome, as Base's native project, demonstrates the continued growth of liquidity on Base L2.

Although Hyperliquid does not rank high in the spot market, it dominates the perpetual contract market, with a market share of more than 60%.

DEX market share of each chain: easy to grow, difficult to retain

The past 15 months have clearly shown a phenomenon: most blockchain projects are able to attract attention, but only a few have remained attractive. From January 2024 to March 2025, the market share of chain-level decentralized exchanges has changed rapidly, and only a handful of projects are truly sticky.

Solana has made the biggest breakthrough. It has steadily climbed in 2024, reaching a peak market share of 45.8% in January 2025, driven by the TRUMP and MELANIA Meme coin booms. However, by March, its market share had halved to 21.5%, but it still ranked first among public chains with an average proportion of 25.1%.

Ethereum is the complete opposite. It started in early 2024 with a share of about 32%, fell to 15.3% in January 2025, and then rebounded to 26.4% in March. Of course, even if Ethereum loses growth momentum, its ecological resilience remains.

Base is the most solid catch-up. It continued to grow from 3% in March 2024 to 12.4% in December 2025, and fell back to 7.4% in March 2025, maintaining an average share of 6.6% during the period. There is no hype, only slow but sticky growth.

BNB Chain remained stable with an average share of 14.7%. There has been neither a sharp rise nor a sharp fall, and a stable flow of retail funds has always been maintained.

Arbitrum got off to a strong start (16% share) but has slipped to 4.8% by January 2025, overtaken by both Base and Solana.

Blast disappeared in the second month after peaking at 42.3% market share in June 2024. This is a typical case of clear incentive-driven transaction volume and zero user retention.

Summary: The DEX dominance of each public chain has strong volatility. Solana has sprung up, Ethereum has achieved value restoration, Base has gradually expanded the ecosystem, and the market hype cycle has shown the characteristics of ups and downs. In the end, the dominant public chain is not the one with the largest volume, but the network with the highest actual usage rate.

Centralized exchanges still dominate spot trading volumes

Despite the explosive growth of DEXs in early 2025, centralized exchanges still dominate the spot market. Even in January, when DEX trading volume peaked, CEXs still accounted for nearly 80% of the total trading volume.

While the dominance of centralized exchanges has slipped from 90% at the beginning of 2024 to a low of 79%, the broader trend is clear: while DEXs continue to grow, CEXs remain the default choice for most traders.

Perpetual agreement market share

The landscape of on-chain perpetual contracts has fundamentally shifted in 2024.

More than two years after dYdX held the top spot in perpetual contract trading, Hyperliquid was born, redefining what it means to be dominant. The platform first reached the top in February, but was briefly overtaken by SynFutures in the middle of the year before regaining the top spot in August. As of March 2025, Hyperliquid has accounted for nearly 59% of the total perpetual contract trading volume, completely cementing its position as the platform of choice for professional traders.

This rise has attracted a lot of market attention, and its product experience is closer to that of a centralized exchange than any previous decentralized exchange. In contrast, dYdX's market share has declined rapidly. From a 13.2% market share at the start of 2024 to just 2.7% in March 2025, users are turning to faster, cleaner, and more modern alternative platforms.

Jupiter's perpetual contract took a different approach, climbing to second place with an 8.8% market share thanks to Solana's native liquidity and the diversion of its spot DEX. Although it rose rapidly, it lacked stamina and eventually fell behind Hyperliquid. Other projects such as SynFutures, Vertex Protocol and Paradex also briefly emerged.

Perpetual contract chain: The execution layer completes the refactoring in one cycle

The biggest shift in perpetual contract infrastructure over the past year has not been which protocols users prefer, but which chains are trusted to execute transactions.

By March 2025, Ethereum and Arbitrum's share of perpetual contract volume has plummeted to 11.8%, in stark contrast to the combined market dominance of the two companies exceeding 65% in January 2024.

At the heart of this transformation is Hyperliquid's self-developed blockchain. The chain has significantly increased its market share from 13.6% to 58.9% over the same period, replacing various Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions that once defined industry standards as the default execution environment for perpetual contract transactions in less than a year. The benefits are not only in the faster trading speeds, but more importantly, in the reliability and low latency guarantees that professional traders demand.

Solana has also experienced a strong rally, with its market share climbing to nearly 16% in late 2024, driven by the Jupiter and Phoenix projects. However, it eventually stabilized in the 10-11% range, failing to continue the breakthrough growth momentum. Although the Base and ZKsync ecosystems have shown vitality (with a peak market share of 6-7%), they have never been able to rank among the top public chains.

Blast has emerged as a cautionary tale for the blast project, which had reached an 18.8% market share in June 2024, only to disappear at an equally alarming rate. In a field driven by product quality and user retention, hype alone is hard to last. The new industry execution standards are clear: performance-focused public chains have redefined the competitive benchmark, and traditional infrastructure no longer has a default advantage.

The future of DeFi lies not in multi-chain scaling, but in protocols that translate industry narratives into user habits.