7 Charts to Understand the State of Decentralized Finance in 2025

Source: Decentralized Finance Investor; Translated by AIMan@Golden Finance

So far, 2025 is a great year for Decentralized Finance.

We have transformed from a hostile regulatory environment under Gary Gensler's SEC to a crypto-friendly one. Moreover, from almost all indicators, the adoption of Decentralized Finance is thriving.

Therefore, I think it is a good time to carefully examine some charts that can display the current market conditions and trends in the industry.

The following seven charts reveal the current state of Decentralized Finance:

1. The trading volume from DEX to CEX continues to hit new highs.

Source: The Block

DEX is slowly but steadily capturing market share from CEX.

In June 2022, the market share of perpetual contract DEX in the derivatives sector was only 0.98%. Three years later, this figure has increased elevenfold.

2. Fluid is the fastest growing DEX

Source: Decentralized FinanceLlama

Fluid DEX's daily trading volume on Ethereum briefly surpassed Uniswap, and this was less than a year after its launch.

With the upcoming launch of Fluid DEX V2, I wouldn't be surprised if Fluid ultimately wins the DEX war on Ethereum.

In terms of capital efficiency, DEX V2 is expected to be more efficient than V1.

3. Yield-Generating Stablecoins Lead Capital Inflows for the First Time

Source: Artemis

A few days ago, Ethena's stablecoin USDe surpassed USDT and USDC in net inflows for the first time in two weeks. What does this mean?

Because USDT and USDC have long been at the forefront of stablecoin adoption. Now, crypto-native solutions are finally beginning to challenge their dominance.

I predict that Resolv, Ethena, and Falcon Finance will continue to experience exponential growth in the coming months.

4. The spot ETH ETF is performing well, but is slowing down.

Source: Coinglass

After several weeks of continuously setting new highs for inflow, the spot Ethereum ETF recently recorded the largest single-day outflow in history.

The reason may be that some TradFi whales have taken profits.

However, if we look at it overall, the past two months have been the best two months for spot Ethereum ETFs so far.

5. DeFi is about to surpass AI in mind share.

Source: Kaito

For more than a year, AI has been in the lead.

However, this situation is starting to change. In the past few months, the attention on Decentralized Finance has more than doubled. At the same time, the attention on Meme has sharply declined.

Fundamentals are becoming important again.

6. Protocols with buyback plans perform best in 2025

Source: Dexu AI

This indicates that the market is beginning to reward tokens with solid fundamentals.

The subcategories of protocols for token buybacks include some projects like Hyperliquid, Pump Fun, Maple, EtherFi, Kaito, AAVE, etc.

7. Continuous decline in BTC exchange reserves

Source: Crypto Quant

Since February 2024 (shortly after the launch of the first spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States), BTC exchange reserves have been declining.

In the past bull markets, the opposite typically occurs.

However, during this period, the purchasing pressure generated by BTC ETFs and cryptocurrency fund companies had a tremendous positive impact on the BTC price.

That said, these are all the charts I want to showcase in this issue of the newsletter.

Overall, I am very excited about the current market conditions.

As you can see above, the fundamentals are becoming increasingly important. I am glad to see more and more projects starting to buy back their own tokens.

I hope that the prices in the coming months will reflect all the recent progress.