The big waves are sweeping the sands, and this article takes stock of the recent earnings performance of seven major mainstream DEXs
Scof，ChainCatcher
TB，ChainCatcher
Over the past week, there has been a lot of discussion about the current state of the existence of decentralized exchanges.
Hyperliquid shook the market with a 50x leveraged whale "self-detonation arbitrage", and its HLP vault lost nearly $4 million after taking on liquidation orders.
On the other hand, GMGN, which had a lot of scenery during the Pump period, also fell into a predicament that could not be ignored. According to Dune, the platform's revenue has plummeted nearly 97% from $2.34 million on January 19 to $74,000 on March 11. At the same time, the community has reported that high KOL marketing spend, user churn, and CEX entry have led to increased competition, raising further concerns about the future of GMGN.
With this in mind, ChainCatcher has taken stock of the recent earnings of seven major DEXs in this article for readers' reference.
Quick interpretation (no ink, just look at the conclusion)
Jupiter and PancakeSwap still maintain high daily returns, and long-term returns are stable.
Hyperliquid leads the last 24 hours of earnings, but it is still a large pullback from its all-time high.
Raydium、Shadow Exchange Revenue has dropped significantly, and market activity has noticeably declined.
Although Aerodrome, THENA and others have declined seriously, they still have a certain degree of profitability.
Here's a comparison of the last 24-hour returns of several major DEXs with the highest daily returns in history:
Break it down one by one to see the latest trends and trends of mainstream DEXs
1. Shadow Exchange
Background & Positioning: A centralized liquidity layer and exchange natively deployed on Sonic. Powered by the x(3,3) incentive model, the goal is to provide an efficient, low-cost trading experience.
Earnings data:864.44K all-time,83K last 24 hours,-90.30%.
Market performance: Ranked in the top 10 crypto revenue in the last 30 days, with consistent user activity. The x(3,3) mechanism improves the efficiency of capital utilization, and the MEV protection mechanism optimizes the trading experience, and liquidity providers and traders can make considerable gains. The GEMS reward system attracts in-depth participation in the Sonic ecosystem, promotes the expansion of the protocol ecosystem, and shows sustainable growth potential.
2. Raydium
Background and positioning: AMM DEX, the head of the Solana ecosystem, has attracted a large number of users in the past with its low fees and efficient transactions.
Earnings data: The all-time high is 3.39M, only 48K in the last 24 hours, a decrease of 98.57%, and the market activity has dropped sharply. Its native token
Market performance: Q4 2024 once accounted for 61% of SolanaDEX's trading volume, but the TVL was only 39% of Uniswap's, indicating that trading is active but liquidity is relatively insufficient. At the same time, since Raydium's transaction volume is highly supported by Pump.fun, it must seek to expand the layout of new non-meme areas in the future.
3. Jupiter
Background and positioning: The leading DEX aggregator of the Solana ecosystem, which provides the best transaction path optimization, is the core pillar of Solana's DeFi trading volume.
Earnings data: 3.13M all-time high, 329K in the last 24 hours, down 89.46%, but still maintain a high level of activity compared to other DEXs.
Market performance: As the DEX with the largest trading volume in the Solana ecosystem, it has high deep liquidity and cross-platform integration, and low user transaction costs. However, due to the Libra incident some time ago, it was suspected that there was insider trading, and there are no further investigation results yet.
4. PancakeSwap
Background and positioning: DEX is the leader of the BSC ecosystem, which remains competitive with low gas fees, high-speed transactions, and multi-chain scaling (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, etc.).
Earnings data: 6.4M all-time, 1.11M in the last 24 hours, down 82.65%, but still maintaining high profitability in the DeFi space.
Market performance: Thanks to the activity of the BSC ecosystem, PancakeSwap has a wide DeFi user base and is constantly expanding product features (such as NFTs, staking, etc.).
5. Hyperliquid
Background and positioning: The decentralized derivatives trading platform of the Arbitrum ecosystem adopts an active market-making mechanism to form differentiated competition with GMX.
Earnings data: All-time high of 4.42M, down 73.52% in the last 24 hours at 1.17M, but still dominating the DeFi derivatives market.
Market performance: Thanks to traders attracted by highly leveraged trading, Hyperliquid maintains its lead in terms of trading volume and profitability. However, due to the recent whale arbitrage incident, users have doubts about its liquidity management mechanism, resulting in some funds fleeing in a risk-off manner.
6. Aerodrome
Background and positioning: The core DEX of the Base ecosystem adopts the ve(3,3) economic model to incentivize liquidity providers and optimize the trading experience.
Earnings data: 1.52M all-time high, 290K in the last 24 hours, down 80.91%, market liquidity has decreased but still maintains a certain level of activity.
Market Performance: Dominates the Base ecosystem, thanks to the recent signs of recovery of the Base chain, the market performance is strong, the trading volume and market capitalization continue to grow, and the community participation is high.
7. THENA
Background and positioning: One of the DEXs in the BNB ecosystem, which adopts the ve(3,3) economic model and aims to improve the sustainability of liquidity incentives.
Earnings data: The all-time high is 208.95K, 48K in the last 24 hours, a decrease of 77.02%, despite the decline, it is still somewhat competitive in the BSC ecosystem.
Market performance: It is a second-tier DEX in the BSC ecosystem and faces strong competition from PancakeSwap, but its ve(3,3) model can still attract some liquidity. ACCORDING TO THE WEBSITE, THENA IS PLANNING TO MIGRATE TO V3. This upgrade will introduce "Hooks", which allow smart contracts to be deployed on specific liquidity pools to execute specific logic when users interact. This will support advanced order types, complex applications, and customization needs, further enhancing the flexibility and functionality of the protocol.
At present, decentralized exchanges as a whole are showing a trend of declining returns, intensified competition, and structural differentiation. Revenue from mainstream platforms has generally fallen by 70%-98% from historical highs, and market activity has been significantly affected.
Jupiter and PancakeSwap are still firmly in the lead, with high single-day returns, relatively stable long-term performance, and rely on the ecological layout and user base to maintain competitiveness. Hyperliquid still has a foothold in the derivatives market, but liquidity has been hit by whale arbitrage incidents that have raised concerns about its risk control capabilities. Raydium and Shadow Exchange saw significant declines in revenue, with the former due to lower Pump.fun trading volumes, and the latter due to weaker overall market activity. Aerodrome and THENA still have some profitability, but they are squeezed by stronger competitors in their respective ecosystems.
In the future, DEXs still need to face three core issues:
How to maintain trading activity - the market is cooling, users' willingness to trade is decreasing, how can DEXs improve user stickiness?
How to optimize liquidity management – whale arbitrage, CEX competition intensifies, how can platforms build a more stable liquidity system in the DeFi space?
How to achieve sustainable income - Under the bear market cycle, the high fee model is difficult to support for a long time, do DEXs need new profit models?
In the face of industry challenges, the way for DEXs to survive in the future may no longer be just trading volume, but liquidity, risk control mechanism and ecological layout.
This article is sourced from Foresight News:
https://foresightnews.pro/article/detail/80200
Respectfully submitted by the AIC Team
March21, 2025
