Memecoins Fuel Record Monthly DEX Trading Volumes

Traders bought and sold more than $261 billion of tokens on decentralized exchanges in March, outperforming 2021’s best month by nearly $25 billion.

By: Pedro Solimano • April 01, 2024

image visualizing record monthly DEX trading volumes

Memecoin traders catapulted decentralized exchange activity to all-time highs last month, according to DefiLlama.

March registered an all-time high transaction volume of $261 billion, outscoring the last peak in Nov. 2021, when $237 billion was transacted across DEXs. Last month also witnessed a more than twofold increase from February, when traders bought and sold $121 billion of crypto assets.

Monthly DEX Volume chart — Monthly DEX Volume

The top platforms during March were Ethereum, with $75 billion, followed by the ecosystem most favored by memecoins, Solana, which saw $58 billion. Binance Smart Chain (BSC) closes out the top three with $46 billion.

Notably, Coinbase’s Layer 2 network, Base, broke onto the scene in March. After five months without appearing on DefiLlama’s dashboard, it notched up $7.75 billion last month, likely due to rising interest in memecoins like DEGEN.

The L2 is enjoying its own memecoin season, with the sector’s market cap surging 60% from $1.02 billion on March 25 to $1.63 billion today – with an additional 7% spike today.

While spot Bitcoin ETFs enjoy most of the mainstream media’s attention, memecoins have been pushing to all-time highs in recent months. The sector, renowned for its irreverence and sometimes vulgar or outright racist tickers, has been in a bull run of its own, with six memecoins making it into the top 100 on Coingecko.