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With the world shifting toward decentralized finance (DeFi), launching a Decentralized Crypto Exchange is a potentially lucrative business opportunity for startups and entrepreneurs wanting to capitalize on the evolving crypto economy.
This blog post will showcase the 10 best decentralized crypto exchanges in 2025, carefully selected based on their performance, technology, user base, and features. Whether you want to create a DEX or leverage a DEX protocol, you need to be aware of the top players in the space.
Knowing their strengths, weaknesses, and unique value proposition will help you make better, informed decisions regarding their current offerings, avoid pitfalls, and help you create new, innovative product offerings in a competitive environment. However, before all that, you need to know…
Why Startups are Investing in DEX Platforms?
More people are interested in trading on their own without needing permission, which has led to a growing demand for safe trading options. This trend has made decentralized exchanges (DEXs) a profitable business model for new startups in the cryptocurrency industry. Here are various reasons for launching a DEX platform.
Low Operational Cost
Centralized exchanges require significant operational infrastructure and maintenance, while DEXs are entirely based on smart contracts, which use technology to reduce operational costs.
User Privacy and Control
Many DEX platforms don’t even require KYC/KYB, providing users complete control of their funds and privacy, which makes them attractive to users globally.
Global Accessibility and Liquidity
Much like centralization’s financial barriers to entry, DEXs are enabled by blockchain networks, allowing you to make a product with no useless constraints, meaning, in essence, they are borderless.
High Revenue Potential
Startups can earn money through transaction fees, token listing fees, and governance tokens provided through an agreement with relevant parties. You’re potentially creating several revenue streams from a single platform.
If you’re considering venturing into the realm of Decentralized Exchanges, it’s time to educate yourself on how to create a decentralized exchange, which will make your project successful. DEXs have many advantages and are now key places for launching new cryptocurrency projects. Creating a functioning DEX requires a solid understanding of technical, legal, and market conditions. Now let us see the…
Best Decentralized Crypto Exchange in 2025 – What can you learn from them
For entrepreneurs wishing to start their own DEX, successful DEXs can be studied to provide actionable knowledge about what works, what users expect, and how they create a competitive market. Below is an in-depth look at the 12 best decentralized crypto exchanges in the current landscape.
- PancakeSwap
- Orca
- SushiSwap
- Jupiter
- Dydx
- UniSwap
- Aerodrome
- Raydium
- Curve
- Balancer
- Thorchain
- HyperLiquid
PancakeSwap
PancakeSwap is built on the BNB Chain and is known for offering ultra-low transaction fees to its users. It features gaming elements such as lotteries, prediction markets, and NFTs, which blend traditional decentralized finance (DeFi) with engaging functionalities. This combination has helped attract and retain retail users. Additionally, PancakeSwap boasts an easy-to-navigate interface and instant transaction speeds, creating a seamless and user-friendly experience for both new and experienced users entering the crypto space.
PancakeSwap has an estimated $180 million in revenue per year, mostly coming from trading fees, liquidity farming, and platform rewards. PancakeSwap demonstrates how community, low gas fees, and an enjoyable user experience can come together to help build the scale of a DeFi protocol. If you want to create a decentralized exchange like PancakeSwap, look at PancakeSwap as a strong example. It shows how a DeFi project can engage and make money from everyday users in a decentralized way.
Orca
Orca is a decentralized Crypto exchange built on the Solana blockchain, known for its fast speeds and significantly reduced transaction costs.Orca distinguishes itself from the competition with an elegantly simple and intuitive user interface, allowing novices in DeFi to quickly enjoy the platform! Orca is one of those valuable products that push the boundaries of UX design in this overly complex space.
According to estimates, they expect to realize annual revenue between $30 million and $50 million. Well-designed products and user-friendly features in the Orca app are a good reminder of the notion that what matters most is that products are well-designed, highly usable, and increase enjoyment. Every influenced startup delivering a clean and non-frictional experience might learn about Orca’s product philosophy!
SushiSwap
SushiSwap started as a fork of Uniswap, but is now a multi-chain DEX with its unique ecosystem. After forking Uniswap to create its product, SushiSwap added new features like Kashi lending, BentoBox vaults, and a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to add some governance to its future. Now with multiple chains in its ecosystem, SushiSwap also provides a truly cross-chain product.
SushiSwap earns about $70 million a year and is yet another example of the great innovation that can happen as a result of open-source software and engaged community involvement. For founder entrepreneurs, SushiSwap is the perfect example of a fork that creates its success by adding original value and maintaining its active user base’s involvement in its decision processes.
Jupiter
Jupiter is the largest DEX aggregator on Solana. It allows users to find the best route for trades using liquidity from multiple sources, and provides a critical piece of infrastructure in the Solana DeFi ecosystem with quick, cheap, and optimized swaps. Its monetization model is more volume-driven than fee-driven, and it is expected to make around $20 million per year.
Jupiter shows that user efficiency and smart routing on the backend can be a powerful value proposition. For founders who are interested in innovating on the backend versus UI-led products, Jupiter is a very interesting model.
dYdX
dYdX has established its niche market by providing decentralized perpetual contracts and leveraged trading, which are typically available on centralized exchanges. Originally built on Ethereum and subsequently transitioned to an app-chain on Cosmos, dYdX can provide a high-performance trading experience alongside decentralisation.
dYdX is a very profitable DEX, with revenues exceeding $100 million per year. Its success illustrates the massive opportunity that exists within DeFi derivatives, particularly for platforms that can attract professional/high-frequency traders. For young companies and startups, dYdX illustrates the importance of focusing on the advanced trader segment and building a focus around speed, robustness, and advanced financial instruments.
Uniswap
As the first to adopt the Automated Market Maker (AMM) model, Uniswap has led the way in decentralized trading. They make it simple to swap tokens and list tokens with permissionless functionality on Ethereum and various Layer 2 networks. The open nature of Uniswap’s protocol has led to countless forks and developers around the globe.
Uniswap’s estimated annual revenue exceeds $500 million and has repeatedly ranked as one of the top DEXs by trading volume, and more importantly, is trusted by customers. Uniswap’s success story serves as a reminder of the advantages of being a first-mover and how to shape and develop a business over time. As an aspiring founder planning to Create a DEX like Uniswap, focus on becoming a dominant protocol layer business, building trust with community stakeholders, and developing a comprehensive roadmap.
Aerodrome
As a newcomer in the sector, Aerodrome is live on the Coinbase-backed Base network; the main focus is on incentivized liquidity with a mix of protocol incentives and a DAO governance model. While Aerodrome is still early in its life cycle on Base, they have already established a solid reputation, mostly regarding incentivized liquidity and liquidity mining, where the protocol rewards further promote adoption.
Aerodrome is projected to reach more than $15 million in annual revenues as usage grows. Aerodrome as a story is a great example of how you can experience first mover advantages by launching on a new blockchain. Entrepreneurs can learn from Aerodrome and consider its timing, network positioning, and liquidity-first growth strategy.
Raydium
Raydium operates on the Solana blockchain and combines automated market maker (AMM) functionality with a central limit order book through Serum. This hybrid model enables users to enjoy the ease of AMM trading while also benefiting from the accuracy of a traditional order book.
Raydium’s estimated annual revenue ranges from $25 million to $40 million. Its design demonstrates the potential for thoughtful integration to create a more comprehensive trading experience. For builders looking to provide more than just basic swaps and to enhance user experience, Raydium serves as a model for innovation at the heart of the DeFi ecosystem.
Curve Finance
Curve has built quite a reputation for being able to maximize capital efficiency and optimize stablecoin swaps with very little slippage. They are currently targeting institutional traders and stable asset holders in a niche of the DeFi market where they have the upper hand. Curve’s algorithmic design is what makes it stand apart from the general-purpose AMM.
Curve is generating over $200 million a year, and much of that comes from their stablecoin-only pools. The curve illustrates how narrowing the focus on specific asset classes and then optimizing for specific market segments introduces significant long-term value creation. Startups designing with protocol-based stablecoin users, DAOs, or institutional clients can borrow from Curve’s focus-driven success.
Balancer
As a DeFi protocol distinguishing itself from other liquidity protocols, Balancer leverages customizable liquidity pools with three or more tokens and customizable weight distribution of tokens. This kind of customization is particularly appealing to elite liquidity providers as well as protocols that may wish to program different modular components.
Balancer is approaching $80 million yearly in revenue. Balancer proves that providing quality customization allows protocols to further appeal to both the power users as well as to the developer community. For tech-first founders, Balancer demonstrates the advantages of the protocol-as-a-platform usability extensions through development.
ThorChain
ThorChain is making a big impact in multichain DeFi by allowing users to make native cross-chain swaps without accounting for wrapped tokens. Users can trade real BTC for ETH, for instance, directly from their wallets, creating a more trustless and secure experience.
With over $30 million in gross revenue, ThorChain is a pioneer in multichain DEFI since it allows users to trade native cross-chain assets, which is a substantial barrier that most DEXs avoid because it is very technically complicated. A start-up looking to build cross-chain DeFi products should view ThorChain as a leading institution and to benchmark their own innovation on native interoperability.
Hyperliquid
Hyperliquid is a decentralized derivatives exchange that offers the same speed as centralized exchanges – one to two milliseconds on average – with the addition of being a decentralized solution. Hyperliquid’s unique trading experience is powered by a performance-first user experience that sets a new standard for efficiency in decentralized trading.
Hyperliquid is growing. Its revenue is estimated between $10 million and $20 million, which shows a promising future. Hyperliquid offers exceptional performance, scalability, and professional trading features, providing founders with an excellent model for innovation. This targets advanced traders engaged in multiple product streams who require speed, stability, and lower wallet costs.
Each has found ways to generate revenue through niche specialization, UI improvements, and enhanced trading tools and liquidity. If you’re inspired by these examples, now is the time to formulate your DEX vision.
Now let’s discuss…
How to Strategically Plan a DEX That Meets Market Demands
When you plan to create a decentralized crypto exchange, one of the most important steps is ensuring your platform is relevant to the specific needs, habits, and expectations of your target users.
- Understanding Your Target Audience
Clarify whom you will be building for: casual traders, yield farmers, advanced users, or institutions. Their objectives and behavior will drive the core features and UX of your platform.
- Blockchain Network
Select a blockchain based on speed, cost-effectiveness, user base, and ecosystem maturity. Each of the major blockchains, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and Base, provides different opportunities.
- Security Processes
Security is non-negotiable when building in the DeFi space. Adopt suitable security processes such as rigorous smart contract audits, multi-signature wallets, and decentralized governance tools to make users trust and feel safe with your platform.
- Liquidity Strategy
A decentralized Crypto exchange is only as useful as its liquidity. Depending on your level of experience, decide if you will use AMM pools, aggregators, external incentives, or partner protocols to build deep liquidity.
- Token Consideration
Determine which types of assets you will permit for trading on your DEX. The options include stablecoins, popular tokens, long-tail assets, and potentially cross-chain swaps, all of which are influenced by user demand and bonding curves.
- User Interface & User Experience (UI/UX)
A clean and intuitive design will drive user retention and the user’s comfort with the onboarding process. By 2025, your users will expect your DEX to be mobile responsive, in dark mode, and easy to navigate.
- Gas Fees & Transaction Costs
Select and optimise your architecture to limit your transaction fees as much as possible. Other than adding complexity to projects, high transaction costs can easily discourage smaller traders from trying your platform.
To develop a successful DEX, it is crucial to align your business objectives with the feature set, such as…
| Business Goal | Feature Focus |
| Maximize User Acquisition | Easy onboarding, multi-chain support |
| Build a DeFi Powerhouse | Yield farming, staking, DAO integration |
| Generate Fee Revenue | Volume-based trading engine, swap incentives |
| Offer Premium Trading | High-performance engine, advanced analytics |
Before you start building your DEX, define your user personas, business model, and revenue model. With this understanding in place, your DEX will be scalable, market-ready, and able to make headway against its competition.
During this time, and with the assistance of a leading Decentralized Exchange Development Company like Pixel Web Solutions, you could develop your idea into a strong decentralized crypto exchange platform – and one day be ranked alongside the world’s top-performing DEXs listed above.
Conclusion
We have examined the top decentralized Crypto exchanges of 2025, pinpointed important planning steps, and considered how to align your business vision with the appropriate DEX features. Within each success story, from Uniswap’s powerful innovation with AMM to dYdX’s pro-level trading platform experience, lies an easy lesson for scheduled DEX builders.
Start your DEX today with Pixel Web Solutions. Whether you’re launching your first crypto project or moving your existing products to DeFi, we can help! Our goal is to be your reliable partner, so we will make your vision a reality safely, securely, and strategically.