Perpetual trading platforms in the cryptocurrency market are going through a significant transformation process. Since BitMEX pioneered this model in 2016, centralized perpetual exchanges have emerged as the crypto market’s main liquidity gateways. According to CoinGecko data, these platforms reached a transaction volume of $85.3 trillion in 2025 alone.
However, the recent increase in the speed of product development and the growth in on-chain activities have turned decentralized perpetual exchanges from niche protocols into strong competitors. CoinGecko’s 2026 Crypto Perpetuals reportreveals that this change has become more visible on both the transaction volume, open position and new product listings side.
MEXC and BingX Featured in New Perpetual Listings
The exchanges that listed the most perpetual contracts between January 2025 and April 2026 were MEXC and BingX. While MEXC listed 879 new perpetual contracts during this period, BingX ranked second with 565 new contracts. These figures indicate 55 new contracts for MEXC and 35 new contracts for BingX on a monthly average basis.
Both exchanges appear to be pursuing an aggressive listing strategy in smaller and long-tailed crypto assets. On the other hand, the fact that 6 platforms among the top 11 exchanges list less than 20 perpetual contracts per month on average shows that a more cautious approach continues.
On major exchanges such as Binance, perpetual listings have surpassed spot listings. In the last 16 months, Binance opened 305 new perpetual markets and made 125 new listings on the spot side. A significant portion of these listings were memecoins and artificial intelligence-themed token contracts.
While CEX Volumes Declined, DEX Volumes Remained Strong
According to the report, while the average monthly transaction volume in the 11 largest central perpetual exchanges was at the level of 7.11 trillion dollars in 2025, it decreased to 4.69 trillion dollars in the first four months of 2026. This means a decrease of 34 percent.
BingX was one of the platforms that started 2026 strongly. While the market share of the stock exchange was 3 percent in 2025, it increased to 5 percent in the first four months of 2026. Thus, BingX became the seventh largest central perpetual exchange in the first period of the year.
On the Bitget side, a weaker picture was noted. While the platform’s average monthly transaction volume was 740.62 billion dollars in 2025, it decreased to 287.08 billion dollars in 2026. Although this corresponded to a decline of 61.2 percent, Bitget maintained its sixth place with a 6 percent market share.
Binance and OKX continue to maintain their dominance at the top of the central exchanges. In the first four months of 2026, Binance had a 33 percent market share and OKX had a 15 percent market share.
Hyperliquid Effect in Perp DEXs
The situation is different in decentralized perpetual exchanges. The average monthly trading volume of the 12 largest Perp DEXs increased from $531.65 billion in 2025 to $611.57 billion in 2026. Although volume started strong at $751.59 billion in January 2026, it fell to $481.84 billion in April.
Despite this, current volumes remain significantly higher than levels below $300 billion in the same period in 2025. 2025 was a breakthrough year for Perp DEXs.
While the total transaction volume of these platforms was 1.50 trillion dollars in 2024, it increased to 6.38 trillion dollars in 2025.
Hyperliquid’s influence stands out clearly in this growth. Hyperliquid’s trading volume in April was $190.28 billion. This figure corresponds to approximately 3.9 percent of the total perpetual exchange volume and places Hyperliquid in ninth place, just behind BingX.
DEX/CEX Ratio Peaks in 2025
The trading volume ratio of Perp DEXs compared to centralized exchanges increased throughout 2025. The DEX/CEX volume ratio, which was at 3 percent in January 2025, increased to 13 percent in December. However, there was a slight decrease in this rate in 2026, and as of April 2026, the rate decreased to 10 percent.
This decline marks the first time since October 2025 that centralized perpetual exchanges have regained the dominant share of 90 percent. However, the growth of new generation Perp DEXs such as Pacifica, Extended and Variational indicates that this balance may change again in the coming months.
The fact that all three platforms in question run points programs increases the expectations for possible airdrops in the market. In April, Pacifica and Extended reached 4 percent market share each, and Variational reached 3 percent market share. These platforms have surpassed older players such as Jupiter and dYdX.
DEXs are Gaining Strength in Open Interest Share
While the total crypto open position size was 120.35 billion dollars at the beginning of 2025, it decreased to 99.09 billion dollars at the end of April 2026. This level is more than 50 percent below the peak of $210.02 billion seen on October 7.
Centralized exchanges are still by far the leader on the open position side. However, while the share of CEXs was 96.4 percent at the beginning of 2025, it fell to 86.5 percent as of April 30, 2026. The open position share of Perp DEXs has been above 10 percent since October and reached 13.5 percent at the end of April.
The report also states that the growth of Real World Assets (RWA) in the on-chain space is contributing to the rise of Perp DEXs.
Crypto-focused users are turning to using these platforms to access opportunities in traditional financial markets without breaking their crypto assets.
However, central perpetual exchanges also started to follow this trend. The fact that new RWA-themed perpetual contracts are also listed on CEX shows that competition will not be limited to transaction volume only.
