July Shatters Records: DEX Trading Volume Rockets Past $1T as Hyperliquid Dominates Perp Surge
Decentralized exchanges just crossed the Rubicon—$1 trillion in monthly volume, with Hyperliquid steering the derivatives frenzy.
The Floodgates Open
No longer niche, DEXs are eating CEXs' lunch. July's volume proves retail and pros alike are ditching middlemen—even if gas fees still sting like a Wall Street commission.
Hyperliquid’s Perpetuals Gambit
While spot trading hummed, perps went supernova. Hyperliquid’s surge hints at traders levering up—because why settle for 10x when 100x is a click away?
The Irony
Traditional finance craves crypto’s liquidity… while still pretending it’s a ‘frontier asset.’ Wake up, guys—the frontier’s got a $1T GDP.
BNB dominance on spot
For the third consecutive month, BNB Chain dominated spot trading volumes. The chain’s volumes grew 15.3% and totaled $196.3 billion in July, representing 38.2% the monthly total.
PancakeSwap was the main driver behind growth, which amounted to $188.2 billion in spot trading volume. The BNB-native exchange volume is larger than the other four top DEXs combined, which is approximately $168 billion.
Uniswap registered the second-largest spot volume among DEXs in July, with $96.4 billion. Meanwhile, Solana-based decentralized exchanges wrapped up the top five.
Raydium, Meteora, and Orca registered $31.8 billion, $20 billion, and $19.5 billion, respectively. The five largest blockchains by volume remained the same between June and July, with just one slight change.
Runner-ups
Ethereum registered the second-largest monthly volume at nearly $86 billion, growing 49.3% from June, while solana slid from second to third place in monthly spot trading volume despite growing 36.6% to reach $85.1 billion.
Base and Arbitrum maintained their posts from June as the fourth- and fifth-largest blockchains by spot trading volume, respectively.
Base’s volume increased by 46.8% and reached $41.6 billion, the first time the layer-2 blockchain surpassed $40 billion since January. At the same time, Arbitrum was the only chain in the top five with one-digit growth, reaching $19.2 billion in volume after jumping 7.4%.
Hyperliquid’s perpetuals reign
Hyperliquid became the first blockchain to surpass the $300 billion threshold in perpetual volume, reaching $323.4 billion in July after a 48.3% growth.
The volume surpasses Ethereum’s $48.7 billion by a large margin, which held the spot of the second-largest chain in perpetual trading volume last month. Despite the difference, ethereum has grown by almost 56% since June.
The difference is even larger when decentralized exchanges for perpetual’s volumes are considered. Hyperliquid reached $313.4 billion, dominating 64.3% of the market and posting 16 times Jupiter’s volume of $19.4 billion.
Solana, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum wrap up the top five in perpetuals with $37.2 billion, $21.6 billion, and $19 billion in volumes, respectively.
