What Drives and Limits Decentralized Exchange Adoption Today

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 09:34:41 +0000

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) have emerged as one of the most transformative innovations in the blockchain and Web3 ecosystem. By enabling peer-to-peer trading without centralized intermediaries, DEXs promise greater transparency, user control, and resilience against censorship or single points of failure. Over the past few years, decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms have processed trillions of dollars in cumulative trading volume, signaling strong market interest. Yet, despite this growth, DEX adoption still lags behind centralized exchanges (CEXs) in terms of active users, liquidity depth, and mainstream acceptance.