Decentralized Exchange (DEX) reached a record trading volume of $462 billion in December, despite the adjustment of the memecoin market.
December 2024 marked an important milestone for the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector as trading volume on DEX platforms reached an all-time high of $462 billion, according to data released by defillama on December 30.
This figure continued the impressive growth trend from November, when trading volume reached $374 billion. This explosion occurred against the backdrop of the cryptocurrency market in general and memecoins in particular experiencing a period of high volatility.
DEX leading the DeFi trend
Uniswap, the leading DEX in the market, continued to maintain its dominant position with a trading volume of $106.4 billion over the past 30 days. Immediately behind it is PancakeSwap with $96.4 billion. The fierce competition between these two giants contributed significantly to the record trading volume of the entire DEX ecosystem.
Raydium, the largest DEX on the Solana platform, also recorded notable growth with a trading volume of $58 billion, reflecting the strong development of the Solana ecosystem in recent times. This growth is consistent with Syndica's report of $365 million in revenue from decentralized applications (DApps) on Solana in November, mainly due to the explosion of memecoins created on the Pump.fun platform.
Aerodrome and Orca, two other DEXs, also contributed to the overall success of the market with trading volumes of $31 billion and $22 billion, respectively. Lifinity, Curve Finance, and Hyperliquid, three familiar names in the DeFi space, together recorded a total trading volume of $43.6 billion, demonstrating the diversity and strength of the DEX ecosystem.
However, in contrast to the exceptional growth of DEX, the memecoin market experienced a significant adjustment in December. After reaching a peak of $137 billion on December 9, the market capitalization of memecoins has dropped sharply to $92 billion as of December 23, a decrease of $45 billion.
At the time of writing, the market capitalization of memecoins stands at $95 billion, 20% lower than the beginning of the month. This decline reflects the high volatility of the memecoin market, despite the increasing interest from US exchanges and the new all-time high of the Pepe token in December. The growth at the beginning of December was attributed to a combination of factors, including the listing of memecoins on US exchanges and the FOMO (fear of missing out) effect from investors.
