Decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volume broke the record and skyrocketed to $613.3 billion in October, which is significantly higher than the approximately $500 billion in September, as traders were moving their funds to adjust to the volatile market that kept increasing. DefiLlama’s data makes it clear that the sharp rise in DEX trading was a result of increased on-chain activity and market fluctuations.
Uniswap was the most active DEX with a trading volume of $170.9 billion, which increased from $106.5 billion in the last month, whereas PancakeSwap was the second most liquid DEX with $101.9 billion which also rose from $79.8 billion in September. The analysts remarked that the search for self-custody, liquidity mining, and airdrop opportunities by traders was the reason for the astronomically high performance of decentralized markets.
The crypto market in general followed the same pattern of increased activity as volumes at centralized exchanges (CEX) reached their highest levels since January 2025. The Chainbull’s data dashboard had identified that in October, total CEX trading volume was $2.17 trillion, which is 28% more than $1.69 trillion in September.
Binance kept the lead as the main exchange with a volume of $810.4 billion which went up from $636.5 billion in the last month. It was followed in the ranking by Gate with $175.6 billion, Bybit at $156.9 billion, and Bitget at $134.7 billion. Moreover, the DEX-to-CEX volume ratio was at 19.84% compared to 18.83% in September, which indicates that more people are willing to use decentralized trading platforms.
Min Jung of Presto Research has observed that the rise in trading activity on both DEX and CEX was largely a reaction to a deep market drop on October 10, when Bitcoin declined from $121,500 to $110,000 and subsequently went down to $104,600 for a monthly low on October 17. The heightened volatility made traders decide to rebalance their portfolios and pursue short-term trading opportunities.
Vincent Liu, Kronos Research CIO, said the rebound in exchange volumes was a sign of traders’ renewed interest in speculative stories such as BNB Chain memecoins, privacy-focused tokens, and ETF-driven flows. He noted that the sharp price swings created an environment ripe for high-frequency trading and liquidity rotation across decentralized markets.
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