DEX Review: Real-World Insights on Decentralized Exchanges in 2025

When you trade crypto without a middleman, you’re using a decentralized exchange, a peer-to-peer platform that lets you swap tokens directly from your wallet without handing over control to a company. Also known as DEX, it’s the backbone of self-custody trading—no KYC, no bank accounts, just code and keys. But not all DEXes are built the same. Some are fast, cheap, and alive. Others are ghost towns with fake volume and zero users.

Take Serum DEX, a Solana-based order book exchange that once offered near-zero fees and lightning speed. Also known as SRM token platform, it crashed after FTX fell—but the community kept it alive through a fork. Today, it’s still usable, but only if you know how to navigate its quirks. On the flip side, platforms like Xevenue, a crypto exchange with no audits, no reviews, and no traceable team. Also known as fake exchange, are pure scams designed to drain wallets before vanishing. These aren’t edge cases—they’re the reality of a DEX landscape where 80% of platforms have no active users, and half of the ones with trading volume are manipulated.

What makes a DEX worth your time? Speed, fees, liquidity, and whether the team is real. A good DEX doesn’t just run on blockchain—it’s maintained by developers who show up, fix bugs, and respond to users. A bad one looks polished but has zero GitHub commits, no Twitter engagement, and a token that’s been dead for months. You’ll find both in this collection. We’ve reviewed DEXes that actually work, like Serum, and ones that are traps, like Xevenue and UPXIDE. We’ve also looked at how geography affects access—some DEXes block users based on location, even though they’re supposed to be permissionless. And we’ve dug into why some tokens, like PAINT or TOON, were once hot airdrops but now sit at pennies because no one cares anymore.

If you’re tired of hearing hype and want to know what’s actually live, what’s been abandoned, and which platforms still have real trading activity, you’re in the right place. This isn’t a list of shiny new projects. It’s a map of the real DEX battlefield—where winners survive, losers disappear, and your wallet depends on knowing the difference.