Arkham to turn forgotten CEX into future DEX
Data analytics firm Arkham Intelligence says it plans to pivot its crypto exchange spin-off to a fully decentralized model amid struggles to attract enough trading volume to compete with its multi-billion-dollar rivals.
That’s according to a report by CoinDesk.
Arkham’s founder, Miguel Morel, told CoinDesk, that Arkham “is becoming a fully decentralized exchange rather than a centralized exchange,” adding, “The future of crypto trading is decentralized, and that’s what we’re building towards.”
Arkham launched its exchange in late 2024 with the aim of competing with the likes of Binance and other established crypto exchanges for retail interest.
The exchange saw over $677 million in trading volume across February 2025, however, since then, it’s struggled to push daily trading volume beyond $22 million.
Read more: Arkham accused of misrepresenting Zcash data in viral post
Big-name exchanges such as Coinbase and Bybit, however, pull in billions of dollars worth of trading volume with Binance averaging tens of billions on most days.
The Arkham token (ARKM) has fallen by 2.6% in the last 24 hours and is down 82.4% since it was launched in 2023.
Arkham Exchange volume kept alive by airdrop
Users on X noted how many crypto traders were just using the exchange to farm one of its airdrops. One user said, “Season 1 paid out, fomo marketing did its job and now they are sunsetting the platform 😂.”
Arkham claims to have previously given away over $20 million for the Season 1 airdrop. It then tied its Season 2 airdrop to the newly launched exchange and rewarded trading activity with points that can be redeemed for ARKM.
It claimed that the Season 2 airdrop was still ongoing back in April 2025. It’s unclear what will happen to the points accrued by users.
Read more: Arkham ‘deanonymizes blockchains,’ obscures its own ARKM token sales
Late last year, Arkham announced that its exchange was getting its own app and that it was partnering with MoonPay to expand on its fiat on and off-ramps.
Arkham offers users dashboards that are able to track the crypto holdings of various entities, from the likes of Donald Trump’s “Trump Media” to Ethereum treasury firms like Bitmine.
It was founded by Morel in 2020 and is backed by the likes of OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Binance Labs, Bedrock, and Draper Associates.
Protos has reached out to Arkham for comment and will update this piece should we hear back.
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