1inch's annual trading volume reaches $214 billion, a 39% increase. Why did BNB Chain's transaction volume surge by 10 times?

1inch releases the 2025 performance report. This DEX aggregator platform completed approximately $214 billion in token swap transactions throughout the year, a 39% increase year-over-year. The number of transactions reached 114 million, more than doubling compared to the previous year. What does this digital data reflect? How significant are the performance differences across various chains? Where are the new opportunities for cross-chain trading?

Overall Platform Performance Steadily Growing

In terms of scale, 1inch’s trading volume in 2025 grew by 39%. While not explosive growth, maintaining nearly 40% growth amid market volatility is impressive. Even more noteworthy is the doubling of transaction count, indicating that not only is trading volume expanding, but user activity is also increasing.

As a DEX aggregator, 1inch’s core value is helping users find the optimal trading routes across multiple liquidity sources, reducing slippage and costs. The growth of such platforms often reflects the overall activity level of the DeFi ecosystem.

Significant Differences in Chain Performance

The most interesting aspect is the clear variation in performance across different chains. Let’s look at the specific data distribution:

Ethereum remains 1inch’s primary trading hub, accounting for about 45% of the total volume with $97.1 billion. This aligns with expectations, as Ethereum is the most mature smart contract platform with the deepest liquidity and most extensive applications.

The real surprise is BNB Chain. With a transaction volume of $82.1 billion, slightly less than Ethereum, the key point is its nearly 10-fold YoY increase. What does this imply? It indicates a explosive growth in trading activity on BNB Chain in 2025. The driving forces behind this could include Binance’s ecosystem expansion, lower trading costs, and an increasing number of projects deploying on BNB Chain.

Although Arbitrum and Base have relatively smaller volumes, as Layer 2 solutions, their growth potential warrants attention.

Rising Demand for Cross-Chain Trading

Another clear trend in 2025 is the increasing demand for cross-chain trading. The 1inch platform’s cross-chain swap volume reached $69.7 million, completing 148,000 transactions, with nearly 48,000 users utilizing this feature.

While this figure may seem modest, the growth trend is significant. The rising demand for cross-chain trading indicates that users are no longer confined to operations on a single chain but are seeking liquidity and opportunities across multiple ecosystems. The flow of liquidity between Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Arbitrum has become a new focus.

Data shows that Ethereum remains the core node for cross-chain liquidity, with main flows including Ethereum→BNB, BNB→Ethereum, and Ethereum→Arbitrum. This reflects the formation of new patterns in liquidity movement between different chains.

Subtle Changes in Market Structure

1inch points out that trading activity is further concentrating on core networks, while newly connected networks are beginning to contribute transaction volume gradually. This statement warrants careful consideration.

On one hand, leading chains (Ethereum, BNB Chain) are absorbing more trading flow, increasing market concentration. On the other hand, new chains, though still small in scale, are already seeing some trading activity. This is a normal part of market evolution: mature chains provide stability and liquidity, while new chains offer innovation and differentiation.

From 1inch’s perspective, this means the platform needs to effectively aggregate liquidity across different chains to deliver the best trading experience for users.

Summary

The 2025 data review of 1inch reveals several clear signals: overall platform growth remains steady, BNB Chain has become a new growth engine, cross-chain trading demand is rising, and market structure is subtly shifting. These changes fundamentally reflect that the crypto market is no longer dominated solely by Ethereum; a multi-chain ecosystem is forming, and user demands for liquidity and trading convenience are evolving. For platforms like DEX aggregators, maintaining an advantage in multi-chain competition and meeting cross-chain trading needs present new challenges and opportunities.