Perpetual DEX trading volume collapsed 34% year-over-year while open interest held steady, signaling thinner markets with fewer active traders despite persistent positioning.
DeFi & Yields ·
Perpetual decentralized exchange trading volume has contracted sharply year-over-year while open interest remained largely stable, indicating thinner market conditions with reduced trader participation. Across perpetual DEXs, average daily volume fell from $32.4 billion to $21.4 billion over two consecutive six-month periods—a 34 percent decline—while open interest dropped only modestly from $16.4 billion to $14.8 billion. This divergence compressed capital turnover from 1.98x daily to 1.45x, showing that while large positions persist, fewer transactions now move through these markets.
The contraction followed broadly across major protocols. Hyperliquid, which commanded 89 percent of open interest market share in July 2025, saw its share compress to 49 percent by February 2026, with its own open interest declining from $14.6 billion to $4.77 billion. Among six protocols that averaged more than $1 billion in daily volume during the first half of the measured period, none sustained that pace thereafter; ApeX Omni came closest at 80.9 percent of prior volume, while Lighter experienced the steepest drop at 27.3 percent. The 10/10 crash appeared to dislodge activity from platforms including Aster, Lighter, and edgeX, which have not returned to their pre-event peaks.
Some outliers bucked the downward trend. GRVT grew from $796 million to $1.32 billion in average daily volume, a 166 percent increase, and six protocols expanded their open interest beyond prior-period levels, with Extended rising to 497.7 percent of its earlier average per data compiled by DefiLlama's LlamaAI. GMTrade and StandX similarly registered outsized growth despite overall market thinning, though whether these gains reflect new liquidity or migration from larger venues remains unclear.