CEXs are losing market share to DEXs – Even when both are shrinking
The $6.3B Binance hack pushed Hyperliquid's share of CEX volume from 8.0% to 8.3%. But with DEXs less able to reimburse victims, sticky flows could reverse.
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are handling 23% of the Spot trading volume done by combined centralized exchanges (CEXs), including Binance, Coinbase, and others.
This marks a record level, and the market share of DEXs has increased by 1100% in the past five years, with an analyst terming it an “impressive” win for DeFi.
What’s impressive is that the market share of DEXs has increased by over 1100% in the past 5 years. DeFi is winning, and the bull case for it has never been more obvious.
Worth noting that the DEX market share doubled between 2024 and 2025. But it later remained flat during the bear market in early 2026. Now, analysts believe that the Binance hack may further favor DEXs, but it’s not all black and white.
Will the Binance hack accelerate DEX market share?
In fact, analyst Mago found an interesting pattern in the rising market share. DEX volume has dropped 55% year-on-year (YoY) from $588B in 2025 to $262B in 2026, yet they increased their market share from 17.5% to 23.2%.
So DEXs didn’t take share by growing. They took it by shrinking slower than CEXs. When the market cools, CEX flow leaves. On-chain flow sticks.
In terms of monthly spot volumes, Uniswap and PancakeSwap dominated with 36% of all DEX volumes. Aerodrome and PumpSwap came in third and fourth, respectively.
The largest surge in 2026 happened in July, as the DEX market share increased from 18% to over 22%. This was during the broader market rebound, as Bitcoin recovered from below $57.8K to over $60K and extended its recovery to over $87K in August and September.
In fact, to Andy Cavanaugh, founder of The Rollup, the $6.3B Binance hack, after Bitget’s $388M exploit in September, will further boost this trend.
Major vibe shift over the last 48 hours…Onchain >>> offchain.
And some data points support his outlook. For example, Hyperliquid’s share of aggregate CEX volume increased from 8.0% to 8.3% during the Binance hack. On an individual basis, Hyperliquid was doing an equivalent of 14.5% of Binance’s volume, from a 13.5% low in mid-October.
However, most of these DEXs may not fully repay users in case of hacks like Binance or Bitget did. And with rising AI-enabled security risks across self-custody and other segments, this may also dictate sticky flows or returning traders to CEXs.
Besides, this week, Blockaid flagged an attack targeting the front ends of 12 DeFi projects that were this week, underscoring that hacks are not isolated to centralized exchanges alone. It will be interesting to see if security risks will really drive DEX market share in the future.
Final Summary
- DEX Spot trading market share hit a record 23% in October.
- Analysts believe the Binance hack will accelerate DEX trading dominance.
