Odaily reports: 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz stated that 1inch has processed a cumulative token swap trading volume of approximately $809 billion since its founding in 2019, but the company has still not achieved profitability to date. Kunz believes that the current DeFi market size is still insufficient to support the platform in generating large-scale revenue by extracting value, and that rather than pursuing short-term profits, 1inch prefers to continue building infrastructure.
Kunz revealed that 1inch is addressing the issue of DeFi liquidity fragmentation through its newly launched shared liquidity protocol, Aqua. Research commissioned by 1inch from Dune shows that in the first half of 2026, about 85% of concentrated liquidity on major decentralized trading platforms was in a state of low utilization. Of the $1.84 billion in tracked liquidity, approximately $1.6 billion was underutilized, with an estimated $150 million in annual fee revenue left uncaptured.
Aqua allows liquidity providers to simultaneously support multiple trading pairs through wallet balances without needing to deposit assets into liquidity pools, with trade settlement completed by compliance-vetted market makers. About $25 million in funds was deployed on the protocol's first day, accompanied by 10 million 1INCH and 500,000 USDC as incentives.
Currently, 1inch has partnered with major platforms such as Coinbase, and Robinhood has also listed it as a Robinhood Chain partner. Kunz stated that 1inch prefers to build infrastructure first and seek commercialization opportunities after traditional finance and larger-scale capital enter the space.
