Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
Recently, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou posted on platform X stating, 'The first on-chain DEX incubated by Bybit, Byreal, will launch at the end of this month. Born from scratch, it is part of the Solana ecosystem.'
It is pointed out that the uniqueness of Byreal lies in: 1/ CEX + DEX synergy. Byreal is not just 'another DEX.' It combines CEX-level liquidity with DeFi's native transparency. This is true hybrid finance. More CEX + DEX projects are set to launch in the future. 2/ Unified liquidity and speed adopt RFQ + CLMM routing design. Byreal will provide users with low slippage and MEV-protected Swap exchange transactions at an extraordinary speed.
According to official information, the Byreal testnet will go live on June 30, with the mainnet expected to launch in the third quarter.
Bybit is not the first centralized exchange to venture into the DEX field. With the continuous growth of decentralized trading platforms, the improvement of DEX in liquidity and user activity is gradually narrowing the gap with CEX.
DEX market share is rising, with Solana becoming one of the main choices.
According to DeFiLlama data, DEX trading volume has maintained a stable growth trend. In May 2024, DEX monthly trading volume reached 405.3 billion USD, accounting for about 25% of the total global spot trading volume, setting a historical record. Meanwhile, the total locked value of DEX exceeded 20 billion USD.
From the distribution of blockchains, Ethereum still dominates, with Solana ranking second, having a TVL of about 3.3 billion USD, of which more than half is occupied by Raydium.
Bybit chose Solana as the underlying infrastructure for Byreal, primarily based on its significant growth performance. In 2024, the trading activity of meme tokens and on-chain token issuance platforms (such as Pump.fun) on Solana significantly increased, pushing DEX to become the main channel for token launches. Major meme assets including WIF, BOME, and BONK have formed initial liquidity on Solana DEXs like Raydium and Jupiter, which were subsequently listed on centralized exchanges.
Solana has maintained high activity and developer growth over the past year, becoming one of the fastest-growing blockchains in the DEX ecosystem. Solana's daily trading volume stabilizes around 80 million transactions, with total transactions exceeding 30 billion, ranking among the top across public chains. In contrast, Base and Sui have daily trading volumes of around 7 million and 6 million transactions, respectively, which, although relatively small in scale, are growing rapidly with high activity.
In terms of daily active address data, the number of daily active addresses on Solana averages over 4 million, peaking at over 9.4 million. For CEXs seeking to expand on-chain, Solana offers a relatively mature high-performance execution environment and liquidity foundation.
The Decentralization Battle of CEXs
When users choose on-chain trading products, they usually prioritize familiar platforms and a good user experience. This trend has driven major centralized exchanges to lay out decentralized exchange products. There have been multiple precedents of CEXs entering the decentralized trading field. Binance's PancakeSwap based on BSC has maintained a leading position in the DEX market for a long time, OKX launched OKX DEX, and Coinbase supported DEX Aerodrome on Base chain, with trading volume rapidly increasing and market share ranking among the top.
These CEXs gradually gather market liquidity through self-built on-chain platforms or strategic partnerships, covering both on-chain and off-chain user groups. At the product level, they are actively exploring innovative features such as dark pool trading, cross-chain aggregation, and mixed liquidity pools to enhance trading depth and execution efficiency, meeting the increasingly diverse market demands.
From a competitive landscape perspective, CEXs still maintain an advantage in overall trading volume and user scale. However, past liquidity crises and risk events at CEXs have increased user attention towards DEXs that are trustless, on-chain transparent, and have relatively low compliance thresholds, intensifying competition between the two.
From the above data, it can be seen that emerging gameplay tends to favor DEXs that are convenient and have lower compliance requirements, with traffic also flowing to on-chain products earlier, resulting in some CEXs facing an awkward situation of 'not getting the meat, just a sip of soup.' To seize the first-mover advantage in the on-chain market, CEXs have to accelerate their layout to prevent market share from being continuously eroded by DEXs, thereby triggering pressure on profit shrinkage.
Summary
Simon Kim, CEO of crypto venture capital firm Hashed, predicts that DEX trading volume may surpass CEX by 2028. Considering CEXs are increasing their investments in DEXs and the current development trajectory of the DEX ecosystem, the likelihood of this prediction being realized is increasing.
From the industry's development trends, the future form of exchanges may no longer strictly differentiate between centralized and decentralized, with hybrid trading platforms potentially becoming a new direction for development. Ultimately, the demand of trading users remains the key factor for the platform's success or failure. Platforms that can provide stable, secure, and user-demand-compliant products will have a better opportunity to gain an advantageous position in market competition.
