In 2025, the cryptocurrency market underwent significant changes: perpetual derivatives became the primary pricing tool, gradually displacing spot trading. According to the report, trading volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) reached $6.7 trillion, representing a 346% increase compared to the previous year. The largest share of trading was provided by the Hyperliquid platform, which took a leading position among DEX.
This is reported by Finway
Growth of DEX and Shift in Capital Distribution
The total trading volume on the ten largest cryptocurrency exchanges in 2025 reached $92.9 trillion, which is 64.6% more than the previous year. Decentralized platforms showed explosive growth, and capital flows shifted in their favor. Open interest (OI) on centralized exchanges (CEX) fell by 20.8%, while on DEX this figure increased by 229.6%.
In 2025, the crypto market experienced a structural shift: perpetual derivatives (perps) became the key pricing tool, displacing spot trading.
Hyperliquid emerged as one of the main beneficiaries of these trends: the platform entered the top 10 in the global market with an annual trading volume of $2.9 trillion, and by early March 2026, its daily trading volume exceeded $5.2 billion.
Advantages of Derivatives and Hyperliquid Innovations
Analysts note that the main advantage of perpetual futures lies in the efficient use of capital. With leverage, traders gain exposure to assets with smaller investments, can hedge risks without the need to sell assets, and can profit from both rising and falling markets.
During market turmoil in the fourth quarter of 2025, these factors proved decisive: spot trading volumes decreased, while in the derivatives market, traders actively opened short positions and hedged risks. At the same time, the technological development of DEX allowed these platforms to reach the level of centralized exchanges in terms of interface, fee size, and transaction processing speed.
- DEX interfaces have become nearly identical to CEX
- Fees have been reduced to competitive levels or even lower
- Performance has increased to thousands of transactions per second
Hyperliquid exemplifies a new standard for financial markets: with the implementation of the HIP-3 protocol, the platform has opened the listing of any perpetual futures contracts, and the upcoming HIP-4 will integrate prediction markets with derivatives and stocks. In addition to crypto assets, trading in commodities (gold, silver, oil), stocks, indices, and weather derivatives is available on Hyperliquid.
Increased geopolitical tension in the Middle East has become an additional stimulus for the growing demand for on-chain derivatives. Traders are flocking to Hyperliquid for round-the-clock trading of oil, gold, and silver contracts.