Top 7 Decentralized Exchanges

A decentralized exchange (DEX) is a crypto exchange, which relies on smart contracts to enable users to swap one token for another. You don't need to store money on the platform (like with CEXs). To conduct decentralized token swaps, you just need to connect a wallet and deposit the cryptocurrency of the selected network to pay the transaction fee.

Due to different evaluation criteria, as well as the DEX's bad practice of exaggerating trading volumes, it is difficult to make an objective rating of decentralized exchanges. To create a list of the TOP 7 decentralized exchanges, we took the average data from 4 reputable resources – Coingecko, CoinMarketCap, Cryptorank and DefiLama:

The largest and oldest DEX on the Ethereum blockchain. It also supports some additional EVN networks, including Polygon and Arbitrum. Its average daily trading volume exceeds $1 billion. 2020 was Uniswap's golden age, but the platform even today remains the leading decentralized exchange despite the strong progress of the DeFi sector. Its protocol has since gone through several upgrades, with the newest version being Uniswap V3.

The project's native token UNI is trading at $5.6, with a market cap of $4.3 billion according to Coingecko at press time.

A decentralized exchange built on Ethereum and 9 other networks. The platform is averaging nearly $400 million in daily trading volume. Curve attracts traders by using what’s called composability. The project's liquidity pool doesn't require users to add assets at a 50:50 ratio, they can set their own pool parameters. Interestingly, the DEX design resembles an old Windows or Microsoft Word 2003, which still does not prevent Curve from being a top exchange. 

CRV token is trading at $0.54, with a market cap of $344 million at press time.

The largest DEX in the BSC network. In addition to regular token swaps, it offers limit orders, cross-chain bridge, lotteries for CAKE, price predictions, NFT marketplace, and IFO lunchpad. PancakeSwap's yield farms are the most popular among BSC projects, which also provides a good annual yield on both regular tokens and stablecoins.

The CAKE price is $3.75, the market cap is $552 million, and the daily trading volume is about $150 million at press time.

Dodo resembles more an environment for developers of crypto projects. Users can freely swap assets across 12 EVM networks, using a bridge. With Dodo, you can create your own tokens, set up liquidity pools, mine and stake coins, create an NFT collection, and so on. The total daily trading volume is estimated at more than $100 million.

The DODO token can be traded on all networks on which the platform operates. The coin value is $0.11 with a market cap of $46 million.

Balancer runs on the Ethereum blockchain, as well as on Layer 2 Polygon and Arbitrum. The average trading volume exceeds $50 million per day. The platform allows users to create liquidity pools with more than two different tokens in any ratio. DEX also regularly hosts auction-like token sales – a token increases in value based on demand, and the price curve changes throughout the sale period. 

BAL token is traded on all major exchanges at $5.32, with a market cap of $200 million at press time.

One of the oldest DEX along with Uniswap. Sushi is averaging nearly $40 million in daily trading volume, with TVL of $250 million. The platform allows its users to farm tokens in 18 networks, make cross-chain swaps, borrow and lend funds using crypto as collateral, and launch their own project using the integrated MISO launchpad.

The project's market cap is $238 million, with SUSHI's current price of $1.2.

A decentralized exchange on the Tron mainnet. Today's list does not include DEXs built on Solana, Near, and some other networks, because their liquidity is dispersed across several exchanges. Sun is the largest DEX on Tron, and weak competition drives users to focus on this exchange.

The average daily trading volume exceeds $20 million. The SUN price is $0.004, with the project's market cap of $40 million at press time.

Previously, Gagarin News published detailed reviews of some DEXs, such as Sushi and Dodo.

Let's also remember the risks associated with using decentralized exchanges. They include phishing attacks, hacks of smart contracts, scams, and fatal code errors. Always check carefully the domain to which you connect the wallet and messages that pop up when you swap tokens. If you want to make money with yield farming, it is better to mitigate risks by allocating investments among different exchanges.