Trade hub
Definition
A trade hub is a highly populated system in a region where large amounts of items are bought and sold. The amount of trade in a trade hub exceeds the amount of trade in other systems in the same region by far.
Trade hubs
- Jita, super trade hub - The Forge region, Caldari
- Amarr, major trade hub - Domain region, Amarr
- Rens, major trade hub - Heimatar region, Minmatar
- Dodixie, major trade hub - Sinq Laison region, Gallente
- Hek, major trade hub - Metropolis region, Minmatar
There exist several other trade hubs and minor trade hubs throughout the regions.
Here you can find a top 10 list with ratings : EVE Online trade hub ranking ( by MMOData.net
To get a rough idea what the trade hubs are you can look at the ingame map, go to "star map" and then "ingame statistics", there choose "number of pilots currently docked and active", the biggest circles mostly match the most active trade hubs. To be more precise you can crossreference this with market data from the reports of EVE Market data
Another option is to look at 2d EveMaps where many trade hubs are marked.
Jita
The most prominent trade hub in the universe at the moment is the Caldari Navy Assembly Plant station orbiting the fourth moon at the fourth planet in Jita in The Forge region, the common reference is Jita 4-4 or just Jita.
Jita has always been one of the frontlines in the war against lag, as well as the recordholder of concurrent players in 1 system. After the introduction of StacklessIO, Eve64, improved load balancing with Nodes and various other software and hardware improvements and upgrades. The latest record is over 2000 concurrent players.
The daily tradevolume in Jita exceeds several hundred billion isk, making Jita bigger than the 4 major trade hubs combined ( Rens , Amarr , Dodixie and Hek ) .
The income from the trade in Jita due to taxes and broke fees count to the billions daily, making Jita one of the richest systems in the whole universe.
Past trade hubs
The Yulai system was the the first super trade hub and operated at a universal scale, linked to the sovereign space of each empire faction by a superhighway of gates. Concord decided[1] to close to the superhighway to ease congestion and trade quickly declined. Today it plays an insignificant role in trade.