DEX Explained: What It Is, How It Works, and Which Ones Actually Matter

When you trade crypto on a DEX, a decentralized exchange that lets users swap tokens directly from their wallets without a central authority. Also known as a decentralized exchange, it removes banks, brokers, and custody risks — but only if it’s actually used by real people. Most DEXes sound great on paper: no KYC, peer-to-peer trades, full control of your funds. But here’s the catch — a DEX with zero liquidity is just a fancy website. You can’t trade what isn’t there.

Real DEXes need two things: liquidity, the amount of crypto available to trade at any moment and trading volume, how much is actually changing hands daily. Look at SushiSwap on Arbitrum Nova — it’s built on a fast, cheap chain, but if no one’s trading, you’re just paying gas fees to talk to a ghost. Same goes for OpenSwap on Harmony. Both had hype. Neither has users. Meanwhile, platforms like Ref Finance on NEAR move millions daily with fees under a penny. That’s what a working DEX looks like.

Not every DEX is built for trading. Some exist to hand out tokens — like KCCSwap or Bunicorn’s BUNI airdrop — and then vanish. Others, like AdEx Network’s AURA, help you find future airdrops. But if you’re trying to swap ETH for a new memecoin, you don’t care about airdrops. You care about price impact, slippage, and whether your trade will even go through. A DEX with $500 in liquidity isn’t a platform — it’s a gamble. And in 2025, the market has no patience for fake activity.

What you’ll find below isn’t a list of every DEX ever launched. It’s a collection of real reviews — the ones that expose dead platforms, clarify scams disguised as DeFi, and highlight the few that actually work. You’ll see why SushiSwap on Arbitrum Nova is a ghost town, why OpenSwap is inactive, and how Ref Finance quietly became NEAR’s most reliable trading hub. You’ll also learn how airdrops and token swaps get confused with real exchanges — and how to avoid losing money to projects that never had any intent to serve traders.