Hyperliquid and the top 10 DEXs — Is the era of CEXs coming to an end?

Centralized exchanges (CEXs) still hold the majority of liquidation in the crypto market. However, the balance of power is beginning to shift as decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have doubled their market share in spot trading over the past two years and expanded their perpetual Futures Contract operations fivefold.

Data shows that direct blockchain trading is no longer a niche option, but is increasingly becoming a formidable competitor to centralized exchanges.

DEXs are on the rise: Hyperliquid, Uniswap , and PancakeSwap enter the top 10 exchanges.

According to CoinGecko's 2026 CEX & DEX Trading Activity Report , in 2025 alone, CEX exchanges processed nearly $80 trillion in spot and perpetual volume . While demonstrating their continued dominance, DEX growth is also accelerating significantly.

The spot market share of DEXs increased from 6.9% in January 2024 to 13.6% in January 2026. In absolute terms, the monthly spot volume of DEXs more than doubled, from $95.86 billion to $231.29 billion.

At its peak in June 2025, DEXs accounted for 24.5% of Spot Trading activity . According to reports, this milestone was achieved in part thanks to Binance Alpha 2.0 implementing transaction routing via PancakeSwap.

Although that surge was short-lived, from the beginning of 2025 to the present, the market share of DEXs has consistently remained above 10%. This shows that the demand for direct trading on the blockchain is gradually stabilizing and is no longer XEM a short-term trend.

Nevertheless, centralized platforms remained Vai to liquidation, with monthly spot volume consistently exceeding $1 trillion throughout that period.

Perpetuals: The breakthrough moment for DEXs, with Hyperliquid leading the way.

The perpetual Futures Contract market has grown by 75% in just two years, from $4.14 trillion in January 2024 to $7.24 trillion in January 2026. In this growth, DEXs (Demand Exchanges) have performed most impressively.

• Perp DEX volume increased eightfold from $81.7 billion to $739.5 billion.
• DEX's market share increased from 2.0% to 10.2%.

In other words, currently, for every $10 transacted in the perpetual crypto market , $1 is processed through a decentralized system.

A major driving force behind this success is Hyperliquid's breakthrough – the only DEX to make it into the Top 10 largest futures exchanges in the world.

In just six months, from August 2025 to January 2026, Hyperliquid recorded a total volume of $1.59 trillion . This achievement puts Hyperliquid on par with other major players in the market.

In the spot market, Uniswap and PancakeSwap also made it into the Top 10 exchanges with the largest trading volume, each with total transactions exceeding $0.5 trillion in the past six months.

Just a few years ago, the idea of ​​multiple DEXs appearing among the top exchanges in the market was hard to imagine.

The listing of Token indicates structural differentiation.

The report also highlighted significant differences in the number of listed Token . Among centralized exchanges, MEXC and Gate.io led with 1,281 and 1,273 Token listed respectively over 13 months, Medium less than 100 new Token per month.

However, this figure represents only 0.01% of the total 24.04 million Token created during the same period.

Conversely, Uniswap alone has 13.69 million listed Token , demonstrating the completely censorship-free nature of decentralized infrastructure.

This highlights the fundamental difference: CEXs are selective and create scarcity, while DEXs expand abundance.

$2.4 billion lost due to security incidents.

However, this rapid growth also brings with it some risks. In just over a year, crypto exchanges have been hacked, resulting in losses of over $2.4 billion.

Centralized exchanges accounted for the majority of the losses, exceeding $2 billion; of which 71% stemmed from the Bybit incident in February 2025 .

DEXs recorded lower total amounts exploited, with the largest hack reaching $223 million, primarily stemming from smart contract vulnerabilities and oracle manipulation.

The overall conclusion from the CoinGecko report is that, while CEX exchanges still lead, decentralized competitors are gradually closing the gap in both the spot and Derivative markets.

With DEX market share exceeding 10% and more high-quality on-chain platforms for institutions emerging, the trend of shifting liquidation towards decentralization is gradually becoming a reality.