In the past week, the survival status of decentralized exchanges has sparked widespread discussion. Hyperliquid was shaken by the "self-exploding arbitrage" of a 50x leverage whale, with its HLP insurance pool losing nearly $4 million after accepting the liquidation order.

On the other hand, GMGN, which was once glorious during the Pump.fun era, is also facing an undeniable dilemma. According to Dune's data, the platform's revenue has plummeted from $2.34 million on January 19 to $74,000 on March 11, a drop of nearly 97%.

At the same time, the high cost of KOL marketing, user attrition, and the entry of CEXs have intensified competition, causing users to have further concerns about GMGN's future. In this article, ChainCatcher has reviewed the recent revenue situation of seven mainstream DEXs for readers' reference.

Quick Reading (No Ink Trace, Directly See the Conclusion)

• Jupiter and PancakeSwap still maintain relatively high daily revenue and stable long-term performance.
• Hyperliquid has the highest revenue in the past 24 hours, but has fallen significantly from its historical high.
• Raydium and Shadow Exchange have seen a significant decline in revenue, with a noticeable decrease in market activity.
• Although Aerodrome and THENA have experienced severe declines, they still have a certain profitability.

The following is a comparison of the recent 24-hour revenue and historical highest daily revenue of several mainstream DEXs:

Note: All data sources are from defillama, as of March 12

Analyze One by One, Insight into the Current Situation and Trends of Mainstream DEXs

1. Shadow Exchange

Background and Positioning: A native concentrated liquidity layer and exchange deployed on Sonic. Supported by the x (3, 3) incentive model, aiming to provide an efficient and low-cost trading experience.

Revenue Data: Historical high $864.44K, recent 24 hours $83K, down 90.30%.

Market Performance: Ranked among the top ten in cryptocurrency revenue in the past 30 days, with stable user activity. The x (3, 3) mechanism improves capital utilization efficiency, the MEV protection mechanism optimizes the trading experience, and liquidity providers and traders can earn considerable returns. The Gems reward system attracts deep participation in the Sonic ecosystem, driving the expansion of the protocol ecosystem and showing continuous growth potential.

2. Raydium

Background and Positioning: The top AMM DEX in the Solana ecosystem, which has attracted a large number of users in the past due to low fees and efficient trading.

Revenue Data: Historical high $3.39M, recent 24 hours only $48K, down 98.57%, with a significant decline in market activity.

Market Performance: In Q4 2024, it once accounted for 61% of the trading volume of SolanaDEX, but its TVL is only 39% of Uniswap, indicating that it is active in trading but relatively lacking in liquidity. At the same time, since Raydium's trading volume is highly dependent on the support of Pump.fun, it must seek to expand its layout to new non-meme areas in the future.

3. Jupiter

Background and Positioning: The top DEX aggregator in the Solana ecosystem, providing optimal trading path optimization, and is a core pillar of Solana DeFi trading volume.

Revenue Data: Historical high $3.13M, recent 24 hours $329K, down 89.46%, but still maintains relatively high activity compared to other DEXs.

Market Performance: As the DEX with the largest trading volume in the Solana ecosystem, it has higher depth liquidity and cross-platform integration, resulting in low user trading costs. However, in the recent Libra incident, it was questioned for insider trading, and the investigation results are still pending.

4. PancakeSwap

Background and Positioning: The leading DEX in the BSC ecosystem, maintaining competitiveness through low Gas fees, high-speed trading, and multi-chain expansion suites (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, etc.).

Revenue Data: Historical high $6.4M, recent 24 hours $1.11M, down 82.65%, but still maintains relatively high profitability in the DeFi field.

Market Performance: Benefiting from the active BSC ecosystem, PancakeSwap has a broad DeFi user base and is constantly expanding its product features (such as NFT, staking, etc.).

5. Hyperliquid

Background and Positioning: A decentralized derivatives trading platform in the Arbitrum ecosystem, adopting an active market-making mechanism, forming a differentiated competition with GMX.

Revenue Data: Historical high $4.42M, recent 24 hours $1.17M, down 73.52%, but still dominates the DeFi derivatives market.

Market Performance: Benefiting from the high-leverage trading that attracts traders, Hyperliquid maintains a leading position in trading volume and profitability. However, recently it has been affected by the whale arbitrage incident, causing users to doubt its liquidity management mechanism and leading to some capital outflows.

6. Aerodrome

Background and Positioning: The core DEX in the Base ecosystem, adopting the ve (3, 3) economic model to incentivize liquidity providers and optimize the trading experience.

Revenue Data: Historical high $1.52M, recent 24 hours $290K, down 80.91%, with a decline in market liquidity but still maintaining a certain level of activity.

Market Performance: Occupying a dominant position in the Base ecosystem, benefiting from the recent signs of recovery in the Base chain's large MC memecoin, the market performance is strong, with continuous growth in trading volume and market capitalization, and high community participation.

7. THENA

Background and positioning: One of the DEXs in the BNB ecosystem, adopting the ve (3, 3) economic model, aiming to improve the sustainability of liquidity incentives.

Revenue data: All-time high of 208.95K, 24-hour low of 48K, down 77.02%. Although declining, it still has a certain competitiveness in the BSC ecosystem.

Market performance: A second-tier DEX in the BSC ecosystem, facing strong competition from PancakeSwap, but its ve (3, 3) model can still attract some liquidity. According to the website disclosure, THENA is planning to migrate to the V3 version. This upgrade will introduce "Hooks" functionality, allowing smart contracts to be deployed on specific liquidity pools to execute specific logic when users interact. This will provide support for advanced order types, complex applications, and customized needs, further enhancing the protocol's flexibility and functionality.

Currently, the decentralized exchange market is showing a trend of declining revenue, intensified competition, and structural differentiation. The revenue of mainstream platforms has generally fallen by 70%-98% from historical highs, and market activity has been significantly affected.

Jupiter and PancakeSwap remain the leaders, with relatively high daily revenue and stable long-term performance, maintaining competitiveness through ecosystem layout and user base. Hyperliquid still occupies a place in the derivatives market, but the market is concerned about its risk control capabilities due to the whale arbitrage incident, and its liquidity has been impacted. Raydium and Shadow Exchange have seen a significant decline in revenue, with the former affected by the decline in Pump.fun trading volume and the latter by the overall weakening of market activity. Aerodrome and THENA still have certain profitability, but face stronger competitors in their respective ecosystems.

Looking ahead, DEXs still need to face three core issues:

• How to maintain trading activity - the market is cooling down, user trading willingness is declining, how can DEXs improve user stickiness?
• How to optimize liquidity management - whale arbitrage, intensified CEX competition, how can platforms build a more stable liquidity system in the DeFi field?
• How to achieve sustainable revenue - the high-fee model is difficult to sustain in a bear market cycle, do DEXs need a new profit model?

Facing industry challenges, the survival strategy of DEXs in the future may no longer be just competing for trading volume, but competing for liquidity, risk control mechanisms, and ecosystem layout.