Q3 Cryptocurrency Market Landscape Changes: A Leading Exchange Gains 30% Market Share, On-Chain Ecosystem Quietly Rises

In early October this year, a wave of Chinese Meme fever suddenly swept through a public blockchain. Several tokens with “XX Life” in their names quickly became popular within both Chinese and English communities, even prompting overseas players to learn Chinese to participate in the hype.

Interestingly, this wave of popularity didn’t ferment on Solana but shifted directly to another chain. What was the result? On-chain interaction data soared, token prices rose along with market sentiment, making it one of the most prominent mainstream assets after BTC.

On October 11th, the market experienced short-term fluctuations, and Meme hype cooled down temporarily. But unexpectedly, the head of a compliant platform used “Binance Life” as a case study during a product demo—despite previously publicly criticizing competitors’ token listing fees. This incident spread wildly, reigniting community discussions.

After market turbulence, a leading exchange invested $400 million into the “Same Boat Plan” to subsidize users and institutions. The entire industry entered a phase of self-repair, with on-chain activity rebounding and mainstream assets steadily recovering. Despite setbacks, the structural resilience accumulated in Q3 remains — the total market cap of cryptocurrencies surpassed $4.02 trillion by the end of Q3.

Exchange Arena: The “One Super” Dominance with 30% Share

As Bitcoin hit new highs, the total crypto market cap reached $4.02 trillion in Q3, a 16.2% increase from Q2’s $3.46 trillion, and a 72.5% surge year-over-year.

The top 10 exchanges contributed $28.7 trillion in trading volume in Q3, a 32.87% increase quarter-over-quarter. Spot trading reached $4.9 trillion, up 36.11%; derivatives hit $23.7 trillion, up 17.32%.

The distribution of market share is quite interesting: a leading platform with a total volume of $9.93 trillion (spot + derivatives) holds a 34.59% share, the only player consistently capturing over 30% of the market. Other platforms with over 10% share include OKX (12.60%), Bitget (11.58%), MEXC (11.45%), and Bybit (11.36%).

Looking at specific categories, this top platform holds 41.26% of the spot market (about $2.05 trillion), a 3.27% increase from Q2; in the derivatives market, it commands 33.20% (around $7.88 billion), a 1% rise. Gate.io’s derivatives share saw the largest growth, increasing by 2.07% quarter-over-quarter; Bitget grew by 1.04%, MEXC by 0.8%.

More impressively, in Q3, this platform’s net inflow reached $14.8 billion, setting the largest record in the CEX space.

But here’s the question: while the overall market grew 16.2%, and trading volume surged 32.87%, the market share of each player stayed relatively stable. The landscape has become quite consolidated, making a fierce battle for existing market share. Everyone needs new growth points.

On-Chain Battlefield: Active Addresses Surge 57%

A leading platform had already seen this coming. The launch of the phenomenon-level product Alpha in Q2 was a key move — integrating the chain into the main site. After ramping up investment in Q3, the results were immediate.

The latest report shows that the associated public chains of this platform, along with Solana and Avalanche, are ranked as “Q3’s best-performing blockchains.” DEX trading volume hit $225 billion, the highest since Q4 2021, second only to Solana ($365 billion) and Ethereum ($337 billion).

Since September, active addresses on this chain surpassed others, reaching a new high of 52.5 million, a 57% quarter-over-quarter increase! During the same period, Solana had 45.8 million, and Ethereum only 8.9 million. The number of transactions also jumped from 892 million in Q2 to 1.22 billion.

This surge in activity translated into tangible revenue — the chain generated $357 million in fees in Q3. In September alone, monthly revenue hit $2.2 million, a new high since March.

Ecosystem data is even more straightforward: the number of on-chain protocols reached 1,033, 2.7 times that of Solana (381 protocols), and is closing in on Ethereum (1,638). TVL reached $8.729 billion, a 15.02% monthly increase, making it the fastest-growing among the top 10 public chains.

If Alpha was the key in Q2, then the perpetual swaps DEX “Aster,” which appeared in September, is the successor. This Perp DEX’s daily revenue once hit $7.2 million, surpassing the industry leader Hyperliquid ($2.79 million). Its growth directly boosted the chain’s perpetual contract trading volume by 55% in Q3, reaching $36 billion.

In line with cost reduction and efficiency improvements, on September 24th, validators proposed lowering the minimum Gas price from 0.1 Gwei to 0.05 Gwei, and reducing block time from 750 ms to 450 ms. This was the third major fee reduction within 18 months, with the long-term goal of lowering transaction fees to around $0.001.

The effects of previous fee reductions were clear: after lowering from 1 Gwei to 0.1 Gwei in May, median transaction fees dropped 75%, daily transaction volume skyrocketed 140%, surpassing 12 million transactions. The strong correlation between fee reduction and usage growth has been repeatedly validated.

The chain now hosts established DeFi platforms like PancakeSwap, Venus, Uniswap, Solv Protocol, Aave, and more. The appearance of Aster fills out the derivatives puzzle. The ecosystem’s multiple points of growth confirm CZ’s prediction three years ago: DEX has huge potential. Alpha focuses on on-chain spot trading, while Aster handles on-chain contracts—effectively creating two “small exchanges” on-chain.

Behind New Token Highs: Institutional Entry and RWA Imagination

According to traditional capital market logic, when an ecosystem has both super products and strong profitability, capital will assess its value. The $150 billion market cap has propelled the associated token back into the TOP 3, partly driven by institutional optimism about its potential.

Jefferies, a US investment bank, recently stated in a client Q&A report that crypto assets are akin to the early prosperity of the internet, still in the “1996 stage,” with significant growth potential. They recommend analyzing tokens like early tech startups, prioritizing “adoption, development, usage, and use cases.”

Few assets meet this standard. In June and July, several traditional listed companies announced including this token on their balance sheets. When CZ revealed that over 30 teams were preparing related listings, this momentum further accelerated in Q3.

On August 25th, Web3 veteran firm B Strategy announced a $1 billion fundraise to establish a U.S. publicly listed company that would hold this token as a financial asset and invest in the ecosystem. The backing, YZi Labs, is seen as the “strongest family office” in crypto, having spun off from a platform in January this year.

On October 13th, Bloomberg reported that Hong Kong-listed Huaxing Capital plans to raise $600 million to launch a dedicated treasury focusing on this token in the U.S., which, once completed, will be the largest single investment by a listed company. On October 9th, news also surfaced of SoftBank’s PayPay Corp acquiring a 40% stake in the Japanese branch of a certain platform.

Institutional investments and acquisitions, combined with on-chain growth, further boost market confidence and drive token prices upward. It has long since broken free from the platform coin narrative, becoming a comprehensive asset encompassing trading, payments, blockchain fuel, and investment tools.

For traders, it offers fee discounts and cost savings; for investors, a ticket to participate in early projects and earn profits; for developers, Gas to build dApps. By September, the “institutional focus on adoption, development, usage, and use cases” has truly arrived.

On September 24th, Franklin Templeton, managing $1.6 trillion, announced it is expanding its proprietary Benji technology platform into this chain’s ecosystem, leveraging its scalable, low-cost infrastructure and high transaction throughput to develop on-chain financial assets.

On October 15th, China Merchants Bank’s wholly owned subsidiary, CMB International, announced bringing a money market fund with over $3.8 billion in assets onto the chain. By deploying tokenization, investors can subscribe with fiat or stablecoins and redeem assets in real time.

RWA—an already practical channel connecting traditional financial assets with Web3 technology. For on-chain infrastructure, large-scale adoption is necessary to validate value. Compared to Meme hype, this represents a more transformative new world.

As more institutions like Franklin Templeton and CMB International adopt this chain, continuous expansion, upgrades, fee reductions, and efficiency improvements of the infrastructure will help achieve the long-term goal: becoming the cornerstone of the financial system. This is the real path after the token hits a new high of $1,376, leading to the vast universe of stars and oceans.