The growing share of decentralized crypto trading stands alongside Ethena Labs' use of centralized exchanges to hedge USDe, a setup Ethena Labs founder Guy Young says fits the firm's hedging needs.
CoinGecko's report measures activity among the top 20 spot exchanges and top 15 perpetual futures exchanges it tracks. In that dataset, decentralized exchanges accounted for 13.6% of spot volume in January 2026, up from 6.9% in January 2024. Their share of tracked perpetual futures volume rose to 10.2% from 2.0% over the same period. Centralized exchanges still handled most activity in both markets. The figures describe that tracked group, not every crypto trading venue.
The increase was uneven. CoinGecko put spot DEX share at 24.5% in June 2025, then reported a lower share in January 2026. It linked the mid-2025 spike to Binance Alpha 2.0 routing trades through PancakeSwap. Trading volumes by venue cannot show whether lower costs helped raise the DEX share overall.
On the Oct. 7 episode of Delphi Digital's “The Hivemind” podcast, Young said decentralized exchanges can spend less on custody, platform security and customer checks. He also said improvements to trading interfaces have made that cost difference easier to recognize. Young expects decentralized venues to gain more trading activity.
Ethena's hedging setup is a separate venue decision. USDe is backed by crypto assets and derivatives positions designed to offset changes in the value of those assets. Ethena's custody documentation says off-exchange providers hold the backing assets and make them available for hedges executed on centralized exchanges; the assets are not transferred to those venues.
Young says centralized exchanges' safeguards better suit Ethena's hedge positions. The company also cites exchange-failure risk, including FTX, as a reason for holding backing assets away from trading platforms. Its documentation describes custody attestations at least monthly as an ongoing check on those assets.
