Spot DEX volumes declined 10% ($16B) in May and have now fallen 67% ($316.5B) since the October market crash. This marks 5 consecutive months of downward activity.
Solana has shed $94B (-66%) while Ethereum volume is down $52B (-57%).
Perp DEX volumes, however, tell a different story, growing 8% (+$42B) in May and hitting their highest open interest $17.2B (+21%) since September 2025.
Much of this has been driven by demand for 24/7 permissionless access to TradFi commodities and equities that legacy systems simply couldn't offer.
data: @Blockworks
In just 7 months @tradexyz has surpassed $3B open interest and has grown 47% from last month despite a brutal market with extremely limited capital flows.
Nevertheless, it now represents 18% of all OI in the entire perps space from a single HIP-3 market, and 30% of all OI on @HyperliquidX.
What makes this even more compelling is that this is all coming from a completely permissionless market, trading 24/7, giving anyone access to TradFi pairs, rather than just another perp DEX recycling crypto.
Top markets:
Oil: $543M
SP500: $508M
Nasdaq: $428M
$MU: $172M
Gold $104M
data: @asxn_r
Solana just shattered its monthly perps record, processing $76.7B in May, 34% above the previous high set in November 2025 (of $57B) and up 97% month-over-month
Perhaps more interestingly, is what's being built underneath.
Perps are becoming one of the most important financial primitives, both within the onchain economy and extending into the legacy financial system. The battle for dominance has never been more intense.
@solana is positioning as the only network with fully onchain execution and real price discovery driven by two-sided flow, not synthetic or off-chain matching. This means that every order, oracle update, match, cancellation, and settlement occurs onchain. Moreover, next-gen Solana perps are resolutely designed to route revenue back to the network at protocol level from launch.
The race has just begun.
data: @Blockworks
We head into June with @HyperliquidX at its highest ever perp market share, nearly 7% of CEX perp volume, steadily growing 10% through May and 21% YTD.
All of this in an unforgiving down market. Hyperliquid is one of the few protocols that actually works, outperforms legacy venues, and solves a real use case. With US regulated perps on the horizon, the current numbers may just be the floor.
data: @TheBlockCo
Tokenized stocks are gaining traction onchain in many forms. Beyond the $3.4B in monthly trading volume through @OndoFinance and @xStocksFi, there is now over $1.3B of open interest on @HyperliquidX HIP-3 perpetual markets.
This includes $491M in $SPX via @tradexyz, the only licensed S&P 500 perpetual onchain, and $350M combined in $NVDA and $MU.
Permissionless markets that never close ⚡️
data: @hl_eco
Tokenized stocks just hit a new record of monthly trading volume, seeing over $3.4B traded onchain in May. This represents 29% growth month-over-month and 93% YTD.
@OndoFinance led with $2B, followed by @xStocksFi at $1.1B.
This comes as the SEC develops a tokenized stock framework and the DTCC prepares to begin tokenized securities trades in July 2026.
data: @RWA_xyz
Another interesting angle is that @solana now represents 10% of the total onchain active loans market, effectively doubling its representation year-over-year, with over $2.1B in outstanding loans, second only to Ethereum.
data: @tokenterminal
Since the KelpDAO exploit in mid-April, Aave's marketshare of active loans has fallen from 61% to 45% and is the first time the protocol has controlled less than half of all onchain lending since February 2024.
The lending space has since stabilized at around $22.5B in total active loans, but where is the capital moving?
@Morpho has been the biggest beneficiary, growing its share from 15% to 20%. On a broader view over the last 30 days, Morpho (+15%), @0xfluid (+26%), @kamino (+18%), @maplefinance (+21%), and @JupiterExchange (+53%) have all seen lending activity rise. Meanwhile Aave is down 16%.
Interestingly, this decline has continued despite a full industry bailout of $300M+ through DeFi United to cover the bad debt, signaling a structural element to the downtrend.
data: @tokenterminal
Since the KelpDAO exploit in mid-April, Aave's marketshare of active loans has fallen from 61% to 45% and is the first time the protocol has controlled less than half of all onchain lending since February 2024.
The lending space has since stabilized at around $22.5B in total active loans, but where is the capital moving?
@Morpho has been the biggest beneficiary, growing its share from 15% to 20%. On a broader view over the last 30 days, Morpho (+15%), @0xfluid (+26%), @kamino (+18%), @maplefinance (+21%), and @JupiterExchange (+53%) have all seen lending activity rise. Meanwhile Aave is down 16%.
Interestingly, this decline has continued despite a full industry bailout of $300M+ through DeFi United to cover the bad debt, signaling a structural element to the downtrend.
data: @tokenterminal
Heading into the week, @Strategy (+$1.8B) and @HypeStrat (+$1.1B) emerge as the only DATs sitting on over $1B in unrealized gains.
While most DATs focused on simple financial engineering and deployed at the very top, Strategy and Hyperliquid Strategies built products on top of their balance sheets and actively put otherwise idle capital to work.
The dark horse worth watching is @Bitmine: down $7.5B in unrealized losses, yet the most operationally active ETH DAT in the space. They've been aggressively deploying through the bear market and their MAVAN validator is approaching $1M/day in $ETH staking rewards.
Only the strong survive.
data: @artemis