Volumes on decentralised exchanges (dex) have grown in prominent this year, with certain dex applications dealing with volumes comparable to those on huge centralised crypto exchanges.

Ethereum-based dex platforms handled $21 billion in the last seven days, with Uniswap accounting for 71% of all Ethereum-based dex applications today. Statistics from a report published by The Block Research's research and freshly updated analytics, dex platforms witnessed $1 trillion in volume over the course of the year.

Decentralised finance (defi) has risen significantly this year, and by the end of 2021, there will be more than $250 billion in wealth locked in defi protocols, according to defillama.com. 

Metrics further indicate that, Uniswap has the highest 24-hour volume of any blockchain platform dex application, at $1.45 billion today. Data also shows that Uniswap has a total value locked (TVL) of $8.81 billion, which is slightly less than Curve Finance's $22.36 billion.

Uniswap is today's 24 dex leader, with $848 million in 24-hour volume, followed by Pancakeswap. Trader Joe ($453.7M), Curve ($453.1M), Sushiswap ($401M), Uniswap v2 ($380M), and Spookyswap ($185M) are all below Pancakeswap's 24-hour volume. The Block Research has released a comprehensive 150-page analysis titled "2022 Digital Asset Outlook," which looks at both centralised and decentralised exchange volumes.

"The Block's legitimate volume index, the spot volume in 2021 will approach $14.5 trillion, which is 8 times bigger than the volume we saw last year," said Larry Cermak, vice president of research at theblockcrypto.com, in a tweet on December 16. Statistics from the study and a report authored  by Yogita Khatri further show that, dex trade volume reported over $1 trillion in trade volume in 2021.

"Overall, monthly dex volume peaked in May 2021 at $162.8 billion, with the most significant month-over-month spike occurring in January, with a 137.3 percent increase," according to the 2022 Digital Asset Outlook report. "However, volume has yet to fully recover from the May meltdown, with the dex-to-centralized exchange spot volume ratio remaining below 10% throughout the year."

The report emphasises the use of dex aggregators in addition to the dex volumes. Dex aggregators such as 1inch account for only 13.9 percent of total dex volumes, according to the study. "Throughout the year, 1inch was the main dex aggregator with a market share of 64.9 percent, followed by 0x API (Matcha) with 16.8 percent," the analysts write. Market performance, derivatives markets, mining revenue, on-chain volumes, stablecoins, and a review of venture investment in 2021 are all covered in the scope of the researcher's 2022 study.