Benzinga | Sep 27, 2021 03:22PM EDT

DeFi's Watershed Moment? Decentralized Exchange Beats Coinbase's Trading Volume

Decentralized exchange (DEX) dYdX (CRYPTO: DYDX) saw higher trading volume on its derivatives exchange platform than United States-based public crypto exchange Coinbase Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN).

What Happened: According to CoinGecko data, dYdX facilitated over $4.3 billion in trades over the last 24 hours, while Coinbase saw $3.7 billion in volume -- nearly 15% less.

Antonio Juliano -- who left Coinbase five years ago and later went on to found dYdX -- said in a recent tweet that he is "blown away and humbled by the recent growth" of his platform.

Juliano also wrote that when he joined Coinbase that he told the firm's CEO, Brian Armstrong, that he "wanted to found a company some day."

At a later time, Armstrong became one of the decentralized exchange's earliest investors and biggest supporters.

The metric is a testament to the explosive growth of DeFi protocols that started in 2020 and continued this year. According to DeFi tracking service DeFi Pulse, one year ago such protocols managed $20.6 billion, while now they are managing over $84.2 billion -- or growth of nearly 309%.

See Also: WHAT IS DEFI?

Such growth did not go unnoticed. According to mid-August reports, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler is now looking closely into the DeFi space and its DEXs after filing its first unregistered security lawsuit against a DeFi development firm.

At the end of August, the regulator also signed a deal with blockchain analytics firm AnChain.AI to help its efforts in monitoring DeFi protocols.

Price Action: According to CoinMarketCap data, as of press time DYDX is trading at about $19.60 after seeing about 3% growth over the last 24 hours.