Arkham targets $47B Solana DEX market in trading strategy pivot 

Arkham has set its sights on Solana’s thriving DEX market as it announced the launch of its decentralized trading functionality, integrated exclusively with the Solana ecosystem.  

Arkham will now incorporate decentralized trading into its Intel platform. As things stand, it will not just operate as a standalone DEX but as a hybrid that provides intel that it integrates with actual execution for Solana tokens.

Arkham’s new functionality now allows users to discover, filter, and most importantly, trade Solana tokens with high frequency and low latency without leaving the Arkham platform. 

Arkham evolves from CEX to DEX 

Arkham is currently making a concerted effort to expand its DeFi functionalities by allowing users to trade directly on the platform. 

Arkham originally expanded into trading territory in late 2024 with the launch of Arkham Exchange. The platform offered CEX services like spot and perps; however, it struggled with low volume. 

Earlier this year, rumors started circulating that the exchange was getting shut down, but instead of closing, the platform pivoted, switching instead to decentralization. 

Supporters of the move back to Arkham to separate itself from other regular DEXs that don’t provide as much intel. They have also praised the decision to test it out on Solana first, as the ecosystem, with its high throughput and bustling DeFi scene, makes a perfect sandbox for the experiment. 

Solana’s DEX market is thriving 

The Solana DeFi scene and DEX market are bustling with activity, even though most of that activity is currently driven by memecoin trading. 

According to data from Defillama, Solana currently ranks third among all blockchain chains, behind Ethereum and Base, as far as 24-hour spot DEX volume is concerned, with $921 million traded in the past day alone. 

The network jumps to the first spot over the 7-day period, nearing $46 billion over the monthly time frame. Orca, Raydium, Manifest Trade, Meteora and Pump led activity on the network. 

The thriving DeFi scene has also been attracting developers, with Solana’s share of all active developers reportedly surging from 6% in 2020 to 23% in 2026. In contrast, Ethereum’s share dropped drastically to 31% from 82%. 

Solana also now attracts the highest number of hobbyist developers, with its share growing to 28% in 2025, 4% more than Ethereum and 12% more than Base. 

In the same year, Solana also attracted the highest number of new developers at 4,100, while Ethereum took on 3,700, and Base about 2,500. Together, all three ecosystems accounted for 61% of all new developers in 2025. 

The growth has had an effect on Solana’s product shipping rate. According to reports, the Solana dApp store currently hosts over 700 applications, and more are most likely on the way, if the Solana Foundation has anything to say about it. 

In March of this year, the foundation launched the Solana developer platform, a unified interface meant to simplify development for enterprises and institutions. It already has early adopters, including Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union, signaling increased institutional engagement with the ecosystem.