August DEX volume hits highest level since March as TVL climbs $18B

DeFi’s summer slump is officially over. August saw decentralized exchange spot trading volumes climb to roughly $506 billion, according to DefiLlama data, making it the second-highest month on record, just a whisker below January’s all-time high of $507.8 billion. When you add perpetual trading into the mix, the combined figure crossed $1.15 trillion for the first time ever. The numbers behind the surge Spot DEX volume landed at approximately $506.3 billion for the month. To put that in perspective, the gap between August and January’s record is less than $2 billion, roughly a rounding error in a market this size. Perpetual trading did even heavier lifting. Perps volume soared past $648.6 billion, accounting for more than half of all DEX activity in August. Hyperliquid contributed around $405.8 billion of that total on its own. Total value locked across DeFi protocols also climbed meaningfully. TVL jumped roughly $21 billion during August, with mid-month figures rising 9% to hit $83.2 billion. On the protocol level, Uniswap continued to dominate spot trading with somewhere between $139 billion and $143 billion in monthly volume. PancakeSwap followed with roughly $56 billion to $57 ...