Crypto Derivatives Market Shifts Towards Decentralized Exchanges

The crypto derivatives market has undergone a significant shift in recent years, favoring decentralized exchanges (DEXs) over centralized ones. According to a CoinGecko report, perpetual swap trading across top 10 centralized and DEXs reached $92.9 trillion in 2025, with DEXs experiencing a whopping 346% increase to $6.7 trillion.

This surge in volume is particularly noteworthy as it occurred during a broad market decline. The two decentralized exchanges that broke into the top 10 perpetual platforms globally are Hyperliquid and Lighter, which processed $2.9 trillion and $1.3 trillion in annual volume respectively.

Notably, Hyperliquid's volume more than doubled that of Coinbase International, which handled roughly $1.4 trillion in 2025. This impressive growth can be attributed to the platform's unique features, including its own Layer 1 blockchain called HyperCore, which enables sub-second trade finality and throughput exceeding 20,000 orders per second.