Solana DEXs Crowned 2025’s Undisputed Leader, Sealing Dominance with Fifth Straight Month of Trading Volume Supremacy

Solana's decentralized exchanges just wrapped the year the way they spent most of it—on top. For the fifth consecutive month, the network's DEXs have outpaced every other blockchain in trading volume, solidifying a dominant 2025 that reshuffled the entire DeFi leaderboard.

The Speed That Built a Kingdom

It wasn't just about hype. The architecture delivered. Blazing-fast transaction finality and negligible fees didn't just attract users—they created a new economic reality where high-frequency trading and micro-transactions became feasible on-chain. This wasn't an incremental improvement; it was a fundamental shift in what traders expected from a decentralized venue.

A Network Effect That Fed Itself

Developers followed the liquidity, and liquidity followed the developers. A self-reinforcing cycle of new projects, innovative trading primitives, and meme coin mania (let's be honest) turned the Solana ecosystem into a perpetual motion machine of activity. Each successful application didn't just add value—it multiplied the utility of every other application built beside it.

The Institutional Wink

While retail traders fueled the initial surge, the sustained volume tells a subtler story. The consistency signals something Wall Street understands: reliability. When a platform leads for a month, it's a trend. When it leads for five, especially through varying market conditions, it starts looking like infrastructure—the kind that eventually gets a cynical nod from traditional finance suits who still think 'blockchain' is a single, overhyped database.

Solana's DEX dominance in 2025 wasn't a flash in the pan; it was a blueprint. It proved that scalability isn't a luxury for the future of finance—it's the non-negotiable foundation. The old guard is now playing catch-up in a race where the finish line just keeps moving faster. The real question for 2026 isn't who will challenge Solana, but how many will even try to build on a slower foundation.

Why is Solana still a DEX leader? 

The main driver of Solana activity is PumpSwap, which expanded its footprint in the latter half of 2025. 

Solana exceeded $100B in monthly DEX volumes for six months in a row, beating short-term records to become a model of consistency. The chain is still the main venue for new token launches, despite the diminished activity and the loss of “trenches” traders. 

The shift to DEX activity also followed Solana’s leading position in terms of mindshare. Despite the attempts of Base to become the main network for fun on-chain activity, Solana still holds the niche. 

Solana still carries only 6.13% of DeFi liquidity, compared to over 67% for Ethereum. The chain remains a leader in terms of app-based economic activity and token turnover.

PumpSwap and HumidiFi boost Solana activity

In 2025, Solana saw meme tokens go through a massive HYPE stage, then slow down. Despite this, the meme market had a lasting effect. PumpSwap turned into one of the main DEXs on Solana, with $584M in annualized fees. 

The platform accelerated its fee-generating activity in the last quarter of 2025, with $14.8B in volumes for December.

HumidiFi is also adding to the overall Solana activity by providing dark liquidity pools. The DEX reported over $30B in volumes for the past month, becoming one of the key decentralized hubs for Solana’s overall performance. 

HumidiFi also reported increased activity in SOL to stablecoin trading volumes. The Solana ecosystem benefited from highly active minting of USDC stablecoins in the past year. In December, Circle minted $7.75B in USDC on the Solana network, boosting the available liquidity for DEXs that use stablecoin pairs.  

Trading on Solana is heavily dependent on bots. At the end of 2025, Axiom was the most active bot, with 373,990 SOL deposited from user wallets. 

Despite the growth of activity, SOL remained subdued, at $126.21 toward the end of 2025. SOL is still used to liquidate fees, with selling both through DEX and centralized exchanges. SOL is down by 5.28% in December and down over 39% in the last quarter. The token reacted negatively to the rising DEX activity, potentially signaling selling pressure through its native markets.

Get up to $30,050 in trading rewards when you join Bybit today