Ethereum Reclaims Top Spot in DEX Trading Amidst Market Decline and Memecoin Slowdown
In March 2025, Ethereum regained its position as the leading blockchain for decentralized exchange (DEX) trading, surpassing Solana for the first time since September. This shift occurred amid a bearish market sentiment, particularly affecting the memecoin sector, where Solana had been the dominant platform.
Ethereum-based DEXes reported an impressive cumulative trading volume of $64.616 billion in March, outpacing Solana’s $52.62 billion by 22%, according to DefiLama data. This marked Ethereum’s first time leading the charts since September, with Solana falling to the second spot.
This leadership change came as the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization decreased by 4.2% to $2.63 trillion, building on a 20% loss in February. The decline was driven by macroeconomic uncertainty and market disappointment over the lack of significant Bitcoin purchases in the U.S. Strategic Reserve, contributing to Bitcoin’s drop below $80,000.
The downturn in market sentiment particularly affected speculation within the memecoin sector, which saw notable reductions in activity on Solana-based platforms. Raydium, the most prominent Solana-based DEX and once a hub for memecoin trading in late 2024, failed to record any day with trading volume exceeding $1 billion in March. This represents a significant drop from its peak volume of $13 billion on January 18, as reported by DefiLama.
Moreover, Solana-based memecoin launch pads experienced a sharp decline, with daily trading volume averaging under $100 million in March, down from the $390 million recorded in mid-January. The peak of activity on Solana-based DEXes occurred in January with the launch of President Donald Trump’s TRUMP token.
In contrast, Ethereum’s dominance in the DEX space was largely driven by Uniswap, which alone accounted for over $30 billion in trading volume, while Fluid secured the second spot with $9 billion in activity.
Despite Ethereum’s strong performance in the DEX market, its native ether (ETH) token faced a significant decline, falling more than 18% to $1,822 in March. This was a steeper drop compared to Solana’s SOL token, which decreased by 15.8%, according to data from TradingView and CoinDesk. Analysts attribute ether’s poor performance to its inflationary tokenomics and the growing popularity of Layer 2 solutions, which are seen as siphoning activity away from the main Ethereum chain.
