In April, activity on DEX declined again, and it no longer looks like a short-term dip. The downward trend has continued since October 2025. Not only are volumes falling—liquidity is also leaving, both from spot and derivatives.
According to DeFi Llama, the total trading volume for the month was $166.78 billion. This is the lowest since August of last year. Compared to the peak in October, the market has already dropped by about 59%.
Interestingly, the beginning of 2025 looked quite confident. January, February, and March were stronger than the same periods in previous years. But in April, this dynamic abruptly ended, and the figures were lower than in both 2024 and 2025.
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The share of DEX compared to centralized exchanges is now around 14.57%. Overall, this is a familiar range. But it is maintained not due to growth, but rather because some traders are also leaving CEX.
Why Liquidity Is Leaving DEX
The main hit was taken by Uniswap and PancakeSwap. These are the largest platforms, and the drop is most noticeable there. At the same time, part of the audience simply switched—the focus shifted to Hyperliquid and HIP-3, where perpetual trading on traditional assets like stocks, gold, and oil is available.
The idea of DEX itself has not disappeared, but the interest has shifted. Previously, tokens and speculation around them were the main drivers. Now that’s gone. The hype has faded, and memecoins no longer attract liquidity as they used to.
DEX are still used, but more as a utility: for exchanging liquid assets or working with stablecoins. Interest in the “long tail” has noticeably cooled.
This is directly related to market sentiment. The expectation that everything will take off is gone. Now, only individual assets are showing growth, and only if they have liquidity and support behind them.
At the same time, liquidity providers have also started to leave. The risks have not gone anywhere: rug pulls, sharp crashes—all of this remains. Even despite the growth in stablecoin supply, money is not returning to DEX.
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According to Artemis, outflows have been recorded over the past month in the BNB Chain and Ethereum networks. Some of these funds went to Hyperliquid, some to Polymarket, which is increasingly attracting speculative interest.
There is another factor: there are fewer new tokens. The flow from meme platforms and tokensales has decreased. There are almost no new listings. Many projects from Pump.fun remain at an early stage and do not reach exchanges.
DeFi Hacks Have Hurt Trust in DEX
A separate issue is hacks. There have been too many of them in the past month for the market to ignore. The old problem has resurfaced: vulnerabilities in smart contracts. And for many DEX, this makes them look like a high-risk zone.
Most often, liquidity pools are hit. A code error—and the funds are simply withdrawn. Such cases quickly undermine trust. The main outflow occurred in EVM networks, including Ethereum. But the situation is not the same everywhere.
Solana, for example, held up better. Yes, it did not offset the overall decline, but it stood out from the general trend. There, too, the leader changed: Meteora overtook Raydium and PumpSwap in volume.
This is partly explained by the active issuance of USDC, which supported liquidity in the pools. Plus, an important point—the absence of high-profile hacks. Against the backdrop of problems in other networks, this boosted trust, and some traders stayed.
