Decentralized exchanges reached a record 19.5% share of crypto spot trading in July after centralized exchanges posted a much steeper drop in volume. CEX spot volume fell 31.2% to $727 billion, the lowest monthly level since October 2023, while DEX volume also declined but by a smaller 9.82%, to $176 billion.
That gap in the rate of decline is at the center of the debate raised in the report: whether July’s record DEX share reflected a simple denominator effect caused by a shrinking centralized spot market, or a more durable transfer of pricing power toward onchain venues.
Spot was the weakest segment for centralized exchanges
The report cites public market statistics showing that spot volume at leading centralized exchanges fell 35.5% month over month in July. Perpetual futures volume also dropped, but by a smaller 19.6%.
That split suggests spot was the weakest part of centralized crypto trading, while demand for leveraged products held up relatively better. The same dataset showed traffic to major CEX websites rising 3.0%, even as app downloads fell 2.1%, a pattern the article describes as a sign of more cautious market sentiment.
Robinhood reported $18 billion in crypto trading volume for the second quarter, down 35% from a year earlier. On the same platform, notional stock trading volume jumped 85%, while options volume rose 50%.
Coinbase said retail crypto spot trading volume fell 38% year over year in the same quarter. The company also said derivatives and prediction market activity partly offset weakness in spot.
TRM Labs estimated that global crypto trading aimed at ordinary retail users fell 11% year over year in the first quarter to $979 billion, marking a second straight quarterly contraction.
Taken together, those figures point to softer retail participation. Still, the report argues that it would be too simplistic to read the data as a direct migration from centralized exchanges to DEXs.
Coinbase’s own comments are part of that argument. If weakness in retail spot trading was partly offset by derivatives and prediction markets, then traders leaving centralized spot did not necessarily move straight into DEX activity. Some likely shifted into other products instead.
The article also points to a 2025 academic study covering the period from August 2023 to March 2025. It counted 7.2 million arbitrage trades between centralized and decentralized exchanges on Ethereum. Nineteen major arbitrage bots earned about $233.8 million, and three arbitrage entities captured roughly 75% of total profits and trading volume.
The report says genuine retail trading does exist onchain, especially on Solana and on new token issuance platforms. But Galaxy Digital Research is cited as saying Solana fee revenue depends heavily on speculative retail activity, and that activity is deeply intertwined with dedicated automated market makers and execution bots. Based on public onchain data alone, it is difficult to tell whether a given trade came from a real retail wallet or from a bot routing through the same pool of capital.
Price discovery is diverging by asset type
The report says much of the resilience in DEX volume comes from professional traders and automated systems. Data from DefiLlama shows DEX aggregators handled $73.2 billion in volume over the past 30 days. Leading platforms included Jupiter, OKX DEX, 0x, DFlow, KyberSwap, and LiquidMesh.
These venues are built to route large orders efficiently. The scale of that business, the article argues, is far beyond what would be supported by ordinary users simply swapping tokens.
By chain, Solana processed about $49.5 billion in onchain trading volume in July, ahead of BNB Chain, Ethereum, and Base. Stablecoin pairs alone accounted for $31.5 billion, close to 30% of total DEX volume for the month.
Even so, whether a trading venue truly holds pricing power still depends heavily on the type of crypto asset being traded. Multiple comparative studies on Binance and Uniswap, according to the report, show centralized exchanges still dominate price discovery for Ethereum, particularly during periods of sharp market volatility in 2024.
A 2026 paper in The Review of Financial Studies is cited as finding that DEX orders willing to pay high priority fees contain strong market information. In that framework, informed traders are willing to keep paying higher fees to ensure their trades are executed first.
Another 2026 study published in Management Science found that the larger the trade size, the stronger the execution competitiveness of DEXs becomes. Gas costs weigh much more heavily on small trades than on large ones, creating a clear layered market structure.
For Bitcoin, the report says price discovery still relies almost entirely on centralized exchanges, ETF products, and CME futures. Native Bitcoin liquidity on DEXs makes up only a tiny share of global crypto trading.
Mainstream Ethereum trading pairs also continue to follow centralized venues on pricing. Long-tail tokens, newly issued Solana ecosystem assets, and meme coins look very different. Many of those assets start trading onchain before they ever appear on centralized exchanges.
That shift changes what market makers have to watch. In the past, monitoring centralized exchange order books was enough. Now they also need to track the depth of onchain liquidity pools, aggregator routing conditions, and the level of priority fees onchain as part of the broader signal set.
As gas costs are spread across larger orders, trading desks executing block-sized orders are more likely to choose onchain routing, the report says. At the same time, thinner CEX spot liquidity increases the value of cross-platform arbitrage, even as those profits concentrate quickly in the hands of a small group of better-equipped participants.
Where the market share could move next
The article lays out two paths for what happens after July’s record reading.
In a bullish scenario, continued improvements in DEX aggregators, the Solana and Base ecosystems, and large onchain trade execution could push DEX share of total spot volume to 22% to 25%. In that case, more assets beyond long-tail tokens could begin forming prices onchain first, and high-priority-fee orders could move from being an academic niche indicator to a more widely watched leading signal for traders.
In a bearish scenario, if Bitcoin or Ethereum sees a genuine market rebound, CEX spot volume could recover faster than DEX volume. The report says historical patterns show that when risk appetite returns, retail users often go back to centralized trading apps first.
Under that path, DEX market share could fall back to 14% to 16% even if DEX volumes themselves do not collapse. In that reading, July’s record share would mainly reflect a short-term denominator effect from a shrinking broader market, and a single month of stronger market activity could be enough to reverse it.
The report ends with a narrower conclusion than the headline numbers may suggest. A record DEX share shows only that centralized crypto spot trading shrank faster than onchain trading in July. It does not, by itself, prove that price formation in crypto has moved onchain. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and long-tail tokens that trade onchain before exchange listings still operate under different pricing logics.
