The total value of trades on Ethereum’s decentralized exchanges experienced a significant jump in August, climbing 45% to reach $74 billion.
A new report indicates that automated trading programs are becoming increasingly prevalent on Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Data from CEX.IO reveals that in August, these bots accounted for over 73% of all DEX transaction volume – the highest percentage seen so far in 2025. This surge coincided with spot ETH trading hitting a new peak.
Major centralized exchanges saw $519 billion in ETH trading volume during August, representing a 55% increase compared to July. Meanwhile, Ethereum-based DEXs facilitated $74 billion in trades, marking a rise of 45%.
According to CEX.IO’s analysts, the increased trading activity was driven by traders “shifting their investments more towards ETH, reducing their positions in other cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.”
The Ethereum network also saw higher user activity. The number of active addresses each month jumped to 9.6 million, and the total number of transactions reached 51.8 million, both record highs. Simultaneously, average transaction fees decreased by almost 40% to just $0.20, the report stated.
Beneficial Bot Activity
The fall in transaction fees has both positive and negative consequences. While it helped boost DEX volumes through faster automated trading, the analysts suggest that bots in the stablecoin market are playing “a valuable and helpful role,” despite bots often being implicated in frontrunning and sandwich attacks.
The report explains: “Automated systems are increasingly contributing to better market efficiency, faster stablecoin adoption, and enhanced DEX performance by continuously providing liquidity and conducting trades at scale. Ultimately, this benefits both users and the protocols themselves.”
Despite the potential for bots to enhance liquidity, an early 2025 study by Chainalysis revealed that a significant number are implicated in market manipulation. Their research found that in 2024, approximately 23,400 addresses were potentially linked to wash trading across the Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base networks. A small number of addresses engaging in high-volume trading accounted for almost half of the $2.57 billion in suspicious trades identified.
The analysis also indicated that roughly 3.6% of all tokens launched in the previous year – around 74,000 – displayed patterns suggestive of pump-and-dump schemes, with the majority of suspect DEX pools being abandoned within one week.