In 2025, the cryptocurrency market underwent significant structural changes: derivatives, particularly perpetual futures (perps), became the primary tool for price formation, gradually displacing spot trading. According to the latest data, the total trading volume on the top ten exchanges reached $92.9 trillion, which is 64.6% higher than the previous year, while volumes on decentralized exchanges (DEX) surged by a record 346%, reaching $6.7 trillion.
This is reported by Business • Media
Rapid Growth of DEX and Market Structure Change
The shifts in the industry are accompanied by a massive capital outflow from centralized platforms. Open interest (OI) on centralized exchanges (CEX) decreased by 20.8% over the year, while on decentralized exchanges, this metric increased by 229.6%. Among DEX, the platform Hyperliquid emerged as a leader, entering the top 10 global platforms with a turnover of $2.9 trillion for 2025. By early March 2026, the daily trading volume on Hyperliquid reached $5.2 billion.
“In 2025, the crypto market experienced a structural shift: perpetual derivatives (perps) became the key pricing tool, displacing spot trading.”
Advantages of Derivatives and Technological Breakthrough of DEX
The main advantage of perpetual futures is their high capital efficiency. Traders can work with financial instruments with lower investments thanks to leverage, hedge risks without selling assets, and profit from both rising and falling markets. This was particularly evident during the market downturn in the fourth quarter of 2025: while spot volumes were declining, derivative markets were rising as traders actively opened short positions and hedged risks.
The technological development of DEX has allowed them to achieve the functionality of centralized platforms. The interfaces of decentralized exchanges have become almost identical to CEX, fees have decreased to competitive levels or even lower, and transaction processing speeds have increased to thousands of operations per second. This has made DEX attractive to a vast number of users.
Hyperliquid — A Next-Generation Universal Exchange
Experts note that Hyperliquid is quickly transforming from a niche product into a fully-fledged universal exchange thanks to innovations in its protocol. The implementation of HIP-3 opened the possibility for listing any perpetual futures contracts, while HIP-4, currently in development, will allow the integration of prediction markets and stocks alongside derivatives.
Today, on Hyperliquid, users can trade not only cryptocurrencies but also commodities — gold, silver, oil, as well as stocks, indices, prediction markets, and weather derivatives. The growing demand for on-chain derivatives is further bolstered by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East: traders are actively using Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures for round-the-clock trading of oil, gold, and silver.
- Trading volume on DEX in 2025 — $6.7 trillion (+346% year-on-year).
- Leading platform — Hyperliquid with a turnover of $2.9 trillion.
- Open interest on DEX increased by 229.6%.