DEX volumes fell by more than 37% in February compared to the previous month. Despite this, last month’s DEX activity is the highest since February 2025.
DEX activity showed some resilience in February, despite a decline from the strong annual start in January. February 2026 had the best DEX performance since 2020, breaking the record set by February 2025.
DEX activity had its best performance in February since 2020, breaking the record set in 2025. | Source: Dune Analytics
Last month, DEX volumes rose to over $284 billion, breaking the 2025 record of $239 billion. The activity also broke above the 2021-2022 bull market, where DEXs were very active but still not a mature market.
January’s performance of over $402 billion was hard to beat as February was one of the bleakest months in the crypto world. Despite this, the DEXs have shown that niche activities and local liquidity can still support significant volumes.
DEX volumes offset some of the trading slowdown as even centralized volumes fell low in five months. DEXs also took steps to broaden their appeal and launched new ones revenue sharing programs.
DEX activity was also critical to the health of major networks like Ethereum and Solana. On Ethereum, DeFi activity and DEX trading were critical for increased stakes and liquid stakes. Increased demand for collateral provided an incentive to stake more ETH, increasing network security and decreasing the available tokens.
See also Twitter goes crypto, hires official Crypto team
The result is robust DEX earnings are indicative of the overall health of crypto ecosystems.
What factors drove DEX volumes up in February?
DEX volumes showed they were adaptable to new crypto trends. In February, the final score was the result of both meme trading and decentralized prediction markets.
Uniswap was the leading DEX, followed by PancakeSwap and PumpSwap. Kalshi and Polymarket were also included in the top 10 DEXs on a volume basis. HumidiFi contributed to the activity with its dark liquidity pools.
Hyperliquid was another source of activity, although trading fell to a lower base level. The perpetual futures DEX leads other markets in terms of annualized revenue and users, based on Artemis facts. Hyperliquid is one of the few decentralized apps that approaches the volume of centralized perpetual futures.
The DEX landscape changed in recent months as traders looked for liquidity, rather than rushing to provide liquidity for new assets. As DEXs became more reliable and suffered fewer hacks, they still served as a venue for many popular tokens.
The top token winners also rely on DEXs
DEXs were liquid enough to boost some of February’s trending tokens. $PIPPAIN was the biggest gainer last month, with an increase of 129.4%.
$PIPPAIN is largely dependent on Raydium for its trading volumes, which allows whales to drive up the price. The token has gone through another expansion cycle, increasing Solana’s liquidity and DEX volumes.
See also Bitcoin technicals are negative despite adoption and rally: Forbes
Other leading tokens rely on a mix of centralized and decentralized trading, a reminder that niche markets often emerge to defy the mainstream trend.