Specialized purpose DEXs poised for growth in 2025 — Curve founder

Several sectors of decentralized finance are poised for growth in 2025, including special-purpose decentralized exchanges (DEXs), stablecoins, and tokenized assets, according to Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov.

Growth in decentralized exchanges will be driven by new purpose-tailored platforms, such as exchanges for stablecoins pegged to different underlying fiat currencies, thus solving the foreign exchange problem in stable tokens, Egorov said in an interview with Cointelegraph. The Curve founder added:

The number of centralized and decentralized stablecoin offerings will also grow as financial institutions and blockchain developers create new alternatives, Egorov said.

However, the regulatory landscape must catch up with the pace of innovation in the DeFi sector, and financial regulators are still using laws designed for the legacy system established in the 20th century, he said.

DEX volume surged to new heights in the first several months of 2025. Source: DeFiLlama

Related: DeFi lender Nostra pauses borrowing after price feed error

Lawmakers in the United States recently voted to repeal the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) regulation requiring decentralized finance platforms and protocols to report financial information to the government agency.

On March 4, the US Senate passed a resolution repealing the IRS broker rule in a 70 to 27 vote, which was followed by the US House of Representatives voting to kill the IRS rule on March 11.

The resolution will need to pass another Senate vote before being sent to President Donald Trump, who has signaled he’d support it.

A report titled The State of Stablecoins 2025: Supply, Adoption & Market Trends from Dune Analytics and onchain analysis firm Artemis shows that stablecoin adoption surged by 53% year-over-year.

Stablecoins hit a market cap of over $227 billion. Source: RWA.XYZ

The report tracked active stablecoin addresses between February 2024 to February 2025 and found that active accounts increased to 30 million from 19.6 million.

Similarly, a March 18 report from Coinbase and EY-Parthenon indicated that 83% of institutional investors polled say they are increasing their crypto allocations in 2025.

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