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1inch is a decentralised exchange aggregator and intent-based trading network built by Sergej Kunz and Anton Bukov after a May 2019 hackathon in New York, now spanning routing, limit order and cross-chain swap protocols governed by 1INCH token holders through the 1inch DAO
Sergej Kunz and Anton Bukov built the first version of 1inch at a hackathon in New York in May 2019, splitting a single trade across several decentralised exchanges to improve the price. That aggregation protocol, routed by an algorithm 1inch calls Pathfinder, still underpins the network, alongside a limit order protocol, the intent-based Fusion and Fusion+ protocols, a self-custodial wallet and a swap API business. Aqua, a shared liquidity layer in which a single wallet balance backs several quoted positions, opened to the public on 28 July 2026. Development sits with 1inch Labs, the 1inch Foundation funds ecosystem work, and 1INCH holders vote through the 1inch DAO; delegates have disputed the flow of protocol revenue, which goes to Labs rather than to the DAO treasury. 1inch Limited, the entity behind the developer portal, is registered in the British Virgin Islands. In March 2025 an attacker took about $5m from resolver contracts that still used a deprecated Fusion v1 settlement contract; 1inch said no end-user funds were affected, and most of the money was returned in exchange for a bounty.
Developments in which 1inch Network is a named party, newest first.
The aggregator's shared liquidity layer went public across 13 chains, letting providers back several positions with the same tokens without depositing them anywhere—a capital-efficiency claim that doubles as a settlement question.
1inch opened Aqua to the public on 28 July 2026 across 13 EVM networks including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base and BNB Chain. Providers authorise the protocol against tokens that stay in their own wallets rather than depositing them in a pool, and the same balance can stand behind several quoted positions at once. The 1inch Foundation allocated 10 million 1INCH to provider rewards, with a further 500,000 USDC proposed and pending governance approval, and the release says the protocol went through eight independent audits.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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