The overall open positions in the cryptocurrency market have halved compared to the historical high of $210 billion before the liquidation on October 10 last year.

Written by: CoinGecko

Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News

The perpetual contract exchange industry landscape is undergoing structural transformation. Since BitMEX pioneered the perpetual contract trading model in 2016, centralized perpetual contract exchanges have always been the core liquidity hub in the cryptocurrency market, with a total trading volume of up to $85.3 trillion for the year 2025.

With rapid product iteration and a significant increase in on-chain trading activity, decentralized perpetual contract exchanges have grown from niche protocols to strong competitive market participants. CoinGecko has released the 2026 Cryptocurrency Perpetual Contract Trading Market Report, summarizing the core points of the report below:

• From January 2025 to April 2026, MEXC and BingX led the industry in the number of new perpetual contracts, reaching 879 and 565 respectively.
• The top 11 centralized perpetual exchanges saw their average monthly trading volume drop to $4.7 trillion in 2026, down from $7.1 trillion in 2025.
• The top 12 decentralized perpetual exchanges increased their average monthly trading volume to $611.57 billion in 2026, compared to $531.65 billion in 2025.
• Led by Hyperliquid, the trading volume of decentralized perpetual contracts saw significant growth in 2025, peaking at 13% of the centralized contract trading volume.
• The share of open positions in decentralized perpetual exchanges has continued to rise, currently accounting for 13.5%, with Hyperliquid ranking first.

New contract release rhythm diverges, small and medium platforms are more aggressive

From January 2025 to the present, MEXC and BingX have ranked first and second in the industry in terms of the number of new perpetual contracts, adding 879 and 565 contracts respectively, with monthly averages of 55 and 35. The two platforms focus on long-tail cryptocurrency contracts.

Among the top 11 exchanges, 6 have fewer than 20 new contracts on average per month, indicating a conservative layout style. Crypto.com has the fewest new contracts, launching only 2 contracts in December 2025, with a peak of just 13 in April 2026.

Large exchanges generally prioritize launching perpetual contracts, with fewer new spot trading pairs. Over the past 16 months, Binance has added 305 perpetual trading pairs and only 125 spot pairs, with new contracts primarily focused on meme coins and AI-related tokens.

MEXC, BingX, and Gate are major players in new contract releases, with an equally aggressive layout for spot trading pairs. The demand for leveraged trading in niche coins is relatively low, with a higher risk appetite threshold among users.

Due to compliance requirements, the process for launching perpetual contracts is longer than for spot trading, and trading activity for niche cryptocurrencies is also relatively limited. Since January 2025, CoinGecko has listed a total of 7803 new tokens, but the top 11 centralized exchanges have only opened perpetual contracts for 1030 token types.

Centralized contract trading volume shrinks year-on-year

The average monthly trading volume of the top 11 centralized perpetual exchanges was $4.69 trillion in the first four months of 2026, a decline of 34% compared to $7.11 trillion in 2025.

BingX's performance has strengthened against the trend this year, with its market share rising from 3% in 2025 to 5%, currently ranking seventh in the industry. Bitget's trading volume has decreased, with average monthly trading volume dropping from $740.62 billion to $287.08 billion, still holding 6% market share, ranking sixth.

Binance and OKX maintain their top positions with a slight increase in market share, holding 33% and 15% of the market share respectively in the first four months of 2026.

Decentralized contract scale steadily rises, new platforms break through quickly

In January 2026, the trading volume of decentralized contracts reached $751.59 billion, followed by a monthly decline, with a trading volume of $481.84 billion in April, still far exceeding the level of less than $300 billion in the same period of 2025.

The total trading volume of decentralized perpetual contracts in 2025 amounted to $6.38 trillion, achieving several-fold growth compared to $1.5 trillion in 2024. Even amidst overall market pressure, the trading volume in the industry for 2026 is still expected to remain stable or even surpass last year.

Emerging decentralized contract platforms like Pacifica, Extended, and Variational are continuously expanding their market share, with all three platforms launching point reward activities, likely to initiate airdrops in the near future. In April, their market shares were 4%, 4%, and 3% respectively, surpassing established platforms like Jupiter and dYdX.

Decentralized contract share peaks then retreats, major projects stand out

The ratio of trading volumes between decentralized and centralized perpetual contracts has been continuously rising, starting the year at only 3% and peaking at 13% by the end of the year. In 2026, this ratio has retreated to 10% in April, with centralized exchanges reclaiming over 90% of market dominance, reflecting a return to this pattern for the first time since October 2025.

Hyperliquid dominates the majority of trading volume in decentralized contracts, with a trading volume of $190.28 billion in April, accounting for 3.9% of the total contract volume in the industry, ranking ninth, slightly lower than BingX's $196.81 billion and ahead of KuCoin's $83.71 billion.

Currently, the growth rate of decentralized contracts has temporarily slowed, but newcomers like Pacifica are attracting funds based on expectations of point reward airdrops, indicating potential for rebound in future market share.

Overall open positions shrink, while the share of decentralized contract positions significantly increases

The overall open positions in the cryptocurrency market have decreased from $120.35 billion at the beginning of 2025 to $99.09 billion by the end of April 2026, halving from the historical high of $210.02 billion before the liquidation on October 7, 2025.

Centralized exchanges still hold the vast majority of open positions, but their share has declined from 96.4% at the beginning of 2025 to 86.5% by the end of April 2026. Since October 2025, the share of positions in decentralized contracts has maintained above 10%.

In addition, the landing of on-chain real-world asset (RWA) business promotes the development of decentralized contracts, allowing cryptocurrency users to participate in traditional financial market trading without liquidating their assets. However, centralized exchanges have also followed suit, gradually launching perpetual contracts for real-world assets, intensifying competition in the sector.