Key Insights:
Solana crossed $100 billion in DEX volumes in the first 25 days of Nov 2024.
Raydium was the most used DEX on Solana, with a $77.3 billion volume in Nov and a 22% market share, rivaling Uniswap.
Solana saw a phenomenal growth of 109% in DEX volumes as compared to last month.
Still, DEX volumes are far lower than those of Centralized Exchanges due to the latter's multi-chain nature and the host of services it offers.
Decentralized Exchanges on Solana have crossed $100 billion monthly trading volumes today. In the last 25 days (1 Nov to 25 Nov), the volumes have crossed $109 billion. The total DEX volumes for the month were around $305 billion.
This month's total volumes were comparable to those from November 2021, three years ago. However, for Solana, these represented the highest DEX volumes ever recorded.
DEX volumes have been on the rise lately. In the last few months, Solana has seen its DEX volumes rise drastically from $52.5 billion in October to over $109 billion in November (the month hasn't finished yet).
In September, these volumes were even lower at $25 billion.
One interesting insight was that Solana saw its DEX volumes rise even before the election results were announced. This was mostly because of two reasons. First, political memecoins were immensely popular in this election season, and second, Solana memecoins were indeed the top-performing assets in crypto markets throughout the year.
Though Ethereum-based Uniswap claimed the top spot with $81.7 billion and grabbed the top spot, Solana-based Raydium wasn't far behind with $77.3 billion in monthly volumes. In terms of market share, Uniswap was only 3% ahead of Raydium, with 25% and 22% market share respectively.
Among all DEXs, Uniswap topped the list with $88 billion in monthly volumes and accounted for roughly 25% of all DEX volumes. The second spot was won by Raydium (SOL) which saw $77.28 billion, and 22% of all DEX volumes.
The third spot was for Pancakeswap, which had a $34 billion volume and 11.7% of the share. The fourth spot was again won by Solana-based Orca, which had $20.5 billion in volumes and 6.25% of the market share.
This comparison clearly shows how Solana DEX volumes have reached comparable levels to those of the Ethereum ecosystem, with the top DEXs of each chain having just a 3% difference in market share. If this growth rate persists, Solana DEXs could soon overtake Ethereum-based ones.
The rise of Solana, both as a crypto and a layer-1 project, has been phenomenal in the last two years. The token saw its value rise from $14 in November 2022 to over $250 in November 2024.
The Solana blockchain witnessed the same growth as both are intrinsically linked, seeing a perpetual rise in on-chain Dapps, DeFi platforms, and DEXs.
Last month, Solana became the most active blockchain with 120 million users, beating even Ethereum. The total number of users who interacted with the crypto platform was 200 million.
A large credit of his growth goes to Solana memecoins, which in little less than a year managed to achieve a total market cap of $21 billion, with the main drivers of Solana-based memecoins being BONK, WIF, and POPCAT.
Centralized Exchanges are far ahead of DEXs in terms of volumes because they provide several features, such as a wallet, free crypto-to-crypto conversions, free intra-exchange transfers, quick redemption, a low learning curve, and others.
Compared to the largest DEX, Uniswap ($81 billion), and the largest Solana-based DEX, Raydium ($77.3 billion), Binance (the largest CEX) has a monthly trading volume of $785 billion, almost 10 times the size of the largest DEX. Further, the total CEX trading volumes were at $2.15 trillion, 7 times the total DEX volumes.
This clearly indicates the dominance of CEX over their decentralized counterparts. This dominance is expected to continue in the near to medium term because crypto adoption has just started, and CEXs are much more useful for beginners than DEXs.
In the years when crypto markets hit the same level of market penetration as stock markets, we might see the dominance of DEX shadowing their centralized counterparts.
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