January trading volume on decentralized exchanges soared to set an all-time high above $50 billion, eclipsing the previous record of $26 billion from September 2020 by a wide margin, according to data from Dune Analytics.
Aggregate volumes reached $55.8 billion last month, up from $23.5 billion in December 2020.
Volume on this new class of trading platform continue to grow "as traders increasingly prefer transacting in a crypto-native environment," according to Jack Purdy, decentralized finance analyst at Messari. "This will likely continue as they become more liquid and the user experience improves to rival their centralized counterparts," he told CoinDesk.
Uniswap represented over 45% of total volume in this category of exchanges, with $25.9 billion traded in January, per data from Dune.
Noted Uniswap rival Sushiswap claimed nearly 22% of total volume with $12.2 billion last month.
Two trading platforms – Gnosis and DDEX – saw negative growth in January, however, with both exchanges showing volumes double-digit percentages lower than the previous month.
Monthly decentralized exchange volume since Jan. 2019
Source: Dune Analytics, CoinGecko, CoinDesk Research