Every bit the decentralized finance segment continues to gain steam despite an overall slump in the crypto space, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) and assemblage services have recently shown sustainable growth. Meanwhile, within the DEX segment, assemblage services take made remarkable progress.

DeFi still running strong

When Bitcoin's (BTC) exchange rate dropped dramatically in May, some observers feared it could deal a major blow to the entire crypto sector. Notwithstanding, that didn't happen. A few months afterward, the industry is nonetheless chugging along, and its, arguably, most promising surface area — decentralized finance — continues to grow.

Within DeFi, decentralized exchanges have recently been the main growth commuter, pushing aside centralized exchanges (CEXs).

Between January and May, the total trading volume generated by decentralized exchanges tripled from approximately $100 billion to $300 billion, before dipping to virtually $200 billion in June, according to CoinGecko. Meanwhile, during the same period, the CEX segment saw much more modest growth from $1.2 trillion to $one.3 trillion.

The DEX segment has besides reported an uptake in user numbers. Currently, Uniswap is the segment's leader with about 2.v one thousand thousand unique users (addresses), followed by 1inch, which has 600,000 users, and Compound with about 360,000 users.

Meanwhile, the user bases of lending/borrowing protocols, such as Chemical compound and Aave, have hardly grown since the get-go of the year.

The rise of DEX aggregators

Just even within the DEX segment, growth has been unevenly distributed, with automated market place maker-based protocols and DEX aggregators — such as Uniswap, 1inch, SushiSwap and 0x — reporting stronger numbers than nearly other projects.

One major tendency observed in recent months is that more and more users prefer to utilize outside aggregation services, such as MetaMask or DEX aggregators, every bit opposed to trading straight on DEXs. Equally a result, trade volumes on services of this kind have been on the rise.

DEX aggregators have been able to offer users better swap rates than what they would get by swapping directly on Uniswap, SushiSwap and other DEXs. Therefore, users have been increasingly opting for DEX aggregators, boosting their market share. Since the beginning of 2022, the share of DEX aggregators in terms of total swap volume has doubled from vii.v% to xv%.

Lower fees as a factor

I of the reasons that users are increasingly choosing DEX aggregators over DEXs is lower fees. Overall, 2 types of fees are involved in swaps: trading fees charged by projects and gas fees automatically applied to whatever transaction on the Ethereum network.

If you swap crypto assets using a DEX aggregator, y'all withal have to pay the DEX'due south trading fee, only assemblage services don't normally accuse annihilation on top of that. However, DEX aggregators often take extra steps to enable users to reduce their gas costs, which can exist quite substantial.

The nautical chart below displays gas costs incurred past the users of several projects as total gas price in U.Southward. dollars divided by the July 2022 bandy volume.

Moving forward

Despite all the hurdles, the DeFi segment is running strong, and at that place are no signs that it will slow down substantially.

However, as DeFi services gain more than mass adoption, the competition for customers will get tougher, and projects offering higher efficiency, more bonny weather and a improve user feel will be the winners.

This article does non contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves take a chance, and readers should behave their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author'due south alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Sergej Kunz is the co-founder of the 1inch Network, a distributed network of decentralized protocols. From 2022 to 2022, Sergej worked for consulting firm Mimacom, running projects for major customers such as Bosch, Siemens and Porsche. After joining Porsche on a full-time footing, he gradually shifted toward cybersecurity. He also co-hosted the YouTube show CryptoManiacs. At a 2022 hackathon, Sergej and the 1inch Network'southward eventual co-founder, Anton Bukov, adult a paradigm crypto exchange aggregator that became the footing of the unabridged network.