Decentralised exchanges’ record 24% trading share sharpens scrutiny of tokenised stocks
DEX spot volume hit a record 24% of exchange trading in July, driven partly by Robinhood Chain's tokenised equities going live via Uniswap.
Trading on decentralised exchanges climbed to roughly 24% of centralised exchange spot volume in July, the highest proportion recorded since comparable tracking began in 2019, according to a data series maintained by The Block using figures from DefiLlama. The milestone arrives as tokenised equities and permissionless trading venues increasingly compete with licensed platforms for order flow, a shift that regulators overseeing market structure and investor protection will be watching closely.
The ratio had sat below 10% for much of 2024 before accelerating through 2025, as traders migrated to permissionless markets for memecoins, newly listed tokens and assets unavailable on major centralised venues. The Block’s methodology divides monthly DEX volume against a defined basket of centralised exchanges tracked by DefiLlama’s top-30 ranking, meaning the 24% figure reflects DEX activity relative to that covered CEX total rather than the entire global spot market.
A weaker centralised market inflates the ratio
Part of the rise reflects softness on the centralised side rather than a pure surge in onchain activity. Talos reported that total spot trading volume across centralised exchanges fell 28% quarter over quarter to $2.32 trillion in the second quarter of 2026, a decline that mechanically lifts any DEX-to-CEX ratio even without a record month for decentralised volume itself.
DefiLlama’s trailing 30-day rankings as of 2 August placed Solana as the largest spot DEX ecosystem at approximately $49.86 billion, ahead of BNB Chain at $31.04 billion, Ethereum at $28.84 billion and Base at $22.38 billion. The spread across several networks suggests the shift toward onchain trading is not concentrated in a single ecosystem but reflects a broader structural change in where liquidity now sits.
Robinhood Chain adds a new dimension: tokenised equities on Uniswap
Robinhood Chain contributed roughly $14.48 billion in spot DEX volume over the same rolling period, having launched its public mainnet on 1 July. Uniswap Labs deployed four versions of its protocol — v2, v3, v4 and UniswapX — on the network the following day, enabling trading of crypto assets alongside Robinhood Stock Tokens through Uniswap’s web app, wallet and API.
CoinDesk Data estimated Robinhood Chain averaged about $690 million in daily DEX and aggregator volume over a seven-day window, peaking at $943.6 million on 11 July, with Uniswap accounting for roughly 99.5% of that activity. The Robinhood Stock Tokens were made available in more than 120 countries, but explicitly excluded US users, underscoring how tokenised securities are being distributed unevenly across jurisdictions depending on local securities law.
That geographic split is likely to draw attention from European and UK regulators, who have been working through MiCA implementation and separate frameworks for tokenised securities even as US rules for such products remain unsettled. Early trading on Robinhood Chain reportedly also included memecoin activity alongside the tokenised equities, a reminder that permissionless infrastructure tends to attract speculative flows regardless of the underlying asset class it was built to support.
What the shift means for oversight
For policymakers, a rising DEX share complicates efforts to apply exchange-style surveillance, reporting and custody standards, since liquidity increasingly sits in smart contracts rather than licensed intermediaries. The arrival of tokenised equities on decentralised infrastructure adds a further layer of complexity, blending securities regulation with the largely permissionless architecture that has driven crypto’s onchain trading growth since 2024.
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