DeFi has spent years optimizing AMM curves, fee models and routing logic, yet one fundamental issue has remained largely untouched: most liquidity in automated market makers does not actually work. The majority of capital deposited into pools sits unused, fragmented across dozens of pairs and protocols. At Devconnect Buenos Aires, 1inch unveiled Aqua, a protocol designed to challenge that limitation directly.
Instead of locking assets into separate pools, Aqua enables a single wallet balance to support multiple strategies simultaneously. It introduces a shared-liquidity architecture that could reshape how capital efficiency and yield generation function across the ecosystem. With developers, researchers and protocol builders gathered in Buenos Aires, the timing was deliberate.
In this interview, we speak with Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, about what Aqua is, how it works, and why it represents one of the most significant shifts in liquidity design since 1inch introduced aggregation in 2019.
Interview
Why did you choose Devconnect Buenos Aires as the moment to introduce Aqua?
For readers who haven’t followed the announcement closely: what is Aqua? And why this approach?
So how does that translate into higher capital efficiency?
Who is Aqua intended for at this stage?
What was the reaction like at Devconnect?
Is there anything comparable to Aqua in today’s market?
What should the ecosystem expect from 1inch going into 2026?
What is your key takeaway from Devconnect this year?
Conclusion
Aqua marks a meaningful shift in how DeFi thinks about liquidity design. For years, protocols have competed on curve optimizations, fees and routing mechanisms while quietly accepting that most liquidity sits inactive. By introducing a shared-liquidity architecture that allows one balance to serve multiple strategies, 1inch is pushing the conversation toward a more efficient and more composable future.
The timing is notable. As the industry moves deeper into intent-based execution, cross-chain liquidity and institutional-grade infrastructure, the need for capital to work harder and not just sit untouched becomes increasingly clear. Aqua fits directly into that transition. It gives developers a new primitive to build on and gives liquidity providers a model that aligns yield with actual utilization instead of fragmentation.
Whether Aqua becomes a new standard will depend on how fast the ecosystem adopts it, how builders integrate it and how the production version performs once live. But one thing is certain: introducing a protocol that rewrites the assumptions of AMM liquidity at the end of 2025 sets the tone for a very different 2026. If 1inch delivers on the roadmap Sergej outlines, Aqua could influence not just individual protocols but the underlying architecture of DeFi itself.
Source: https://beincrypto.com/conversation-1inch-co-founder-sergej-kunz/
