Solana ended another month as the leader for DEX activity. In the second half of 2025, the chain was the main venue for DEX trading, passing Ethereum and BNB Chain. Solana ended the year as the leader in DEX activity. The L1 chain had a five-month streak where its DEX trading volumes passed all other networks. As a result, Solana ended the year with record revenues of between $1.3B and $1.5B. In December, Solana DEX activity passed $100B in total volumes, more than double Ethereum’s activity of $48B. BNB Chain was second in December, with DEX activity at $58B. Solana activity remained elevated despite the overall slowdown of meme token creation. The chain passed Hyperliquid’s monthly volume of around $8B, and achieved daily trading levels of over $3B. Why is Solana still a DEX leader? The main driver of Solana activity is PumpSwap, which expanded its footprint in the latter half of 2025. Solana exceeded $100B in monthly DEX volumes for six months in a row, beating short-term records to become a model of consistency. The chain is still the main venue for new token launches, despite the diminished activity and the loss of “trenches” traders . Solana remained the DEX leader for the past five months, boosted by activity on PumpSwap and HumidiFi. | Source: DeFi Llama The shift to DEX activity also followed Solana’s leading position in terms of mindshare . Despite the attempts of Base to become the main network for fun on-chain activity, Solana still holds the niche. Solana still carries only 6.13% of DeFi liquidity, compared to over 67% for Ethereum. The chain remains a leader in terms of app-based economic activity and token turnover. PumpSwap and HumidiFi boost Solana activity In 2025, Solana saw meme tokens go through a massive hype stage, then slow down. Despite this, the meme market had a lasting effect. PumpSwap turned into one of the main DEXs on Solana, with $584M in annualized fees. The platform accelerated its fee-generating activity in the last quarter of 2025, with $14.8B in volumes for December. HumidiFi is also adding to the overall Solana activity by providing dark liquidity pools. The DEX reported over $30B in volumes for the past month, becoming one of the key decentralized hubs for Solana’s overall performance. HumidiFi also reported increased activity in SOL to stablecoin trading volumes . The Solana ecosystem benefited from highly active minting of USDC stablecoins in the past year. In December, Circle minted $7.75B in USDC on the Solana network, boosting the available liquidity for DEXs that use stablecoin pairs. Trading on Solana is heavily dependent on bots. At the end of 2025, Axiom was the most active bot, with 373,990 SOL deposited from user wallets. Despite the growth of activity, SOL remained subdued, at $126.21 toward the end of 2025. SOL is still used to liquidate fees, with selling both through DEX and centralized exchanges. SOL is down by 5.28% in December and down over 39% in the last quarter. The token reacted negatively to the rising DEX activity, potentially signaling selling pressure through its native markets. The smartest crypto minds already read our newsletter. Want in? Join them .
