Aqua, the first shared liquidity and the next leap in DeFi: a conversation with 1inch co-founder Sergey Kunz

De Fay has spent years improving AMM curves, rate models and routing logic, but one fundamental problem has remained largely untouched: most liquidity in automated market makers doesn’t actually work. Most of the capital deposited in pools remains unused, fragmented into dozens of pairs and protocols. At Devconnect Buenos Aires, 1inch presented Aqua, a protocol designed to directly address these limitations.

Instead of locking assets in separate pools, Aqua allows a single wallet to support multiple strategies at the same time. Provide a common liquidity architecture that can reshape how capital efficiency works and generates returns across the ecosystem. With developers, researchers and protocol builders gathered in Buenos Aires, the timing was deliberate.

In this interview, we talk with Sergey Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, about what Aqua is, how it works, and why it represents one of the most significant changes in liquidity design since 1inch introduced pooling in 2019.

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interview

Why did you choose Devconnect Buenos Aires as the moment to launch Aqua?

Sergey Kunz:
Devconnect brings together a technical audience that understands what’s going on in building and securing a protocol. Aqua needs exactly this level of scrutiny. The presentation here allows us to speak directly to developers, researchers and security experts who can challenge the model, test it and ultimately build on it.

The decision seems reasonable. Aqua is not a marketing product; It’s infrastructure, and Devconnect is one of the few events where infrastructure launches resonate with the right audience.

For readers who haven’t been following the announcement closely: What is Aqua? Why this approach?

Sergey Kunz:
Aqua addresses a fundamental problem in DiFi: about 90-80% of capital in liquidity pools is not actually working. It is there to support the AMM curve, but it does not generate active value. With Aqua, users do not need to lock assets in separate pools. Assets remain in the portfolio and can support multiple strategies at the same time. Think of it as a virtual DEX engine that runs in your wallet, while remaining completely self-maintained.

In other words, Aqua changes the assumption that liquidity should be fragmented into dozens of pools. It allows a single balance to act as multiple balances without compromising security.

How does this translate into greater capital efficiency?

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Sergey Kunz:
With a traditional AMM, if you want to support several pairs for trading, you divide the liquidity into several places. This reduces usage. With Aqua, the entire amount of the asset can run in several AIMM strategies in parallel. The result is a greater depth of liquidity and a much higher yield. Our tests show that returns increase five times or more, and common liquidity can raise this effect to 15 times compared to a traditional AMM.

This is where Aqua turns into more than a conceptual improvement: it directly impacts LP earnings.

Who is Aqua aimed at at this point?

Sergey Kunz:
For now, this release is intended for developers, security experts, and researchers. They are the ones who will test the protocol. When the production version is released, it will be aimed at liquidity providers who want higher performance with a lower hashrate.

How has the response been to Devconnect?

Sergey Kunz:
The community here is very interactive. Many developers visited the booth to learn how a single liquidity position works across multiple strategies. Even the highly technical participants were surprised that this approach had not been done before. Their feedback has already helped us improve how we explain Aqua before my next talk.

The interaction shows that common liquidity is still an unknown territory but the demand for a more efficient model is clear.

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Is there anything similar to Aqua on the market today?

Sergey Kunz:
No. This is a new architectural paradigm in DeFi. In 2019, 1inch solves buyer fragmentation through aggregation. Aqua solves the fragmentation of providers, liquidity providers. Some projects have explored similar ideas, but none have presented a common liquidity system that works with such a simple integration. Developers can use it with just a few lines of code.

What should the 1 inch ecosystem expect in 2026?

Sergey Kunz:
This year has been intense. We introduced Solana support for intent-based exchanges, developed cross-chain capabilities and rebranded to reflect our shift towards serving traditional businesses and Web 3. We believe that every future business will rely on Web 3 infrastructure in the same way that every modern business relies on the Internet. The full version of Aqua is expected to be released at the end of this year or early next year, with an interface and third-party developers preparing integrations. Yes, there are additional protocols in the channel.

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What is the main point of the article in Devconnect this year?

Sergey Kunz:
Many teams think they are competing with each other, but in reality we are building different pieces of the same infrastructure. A number of developers have approached us concerned that Aqua could disrupt their business. My message to everyone is that we are all partners. If we focus on solving the main problems, the ecosystem becomes easier to use even for traditional industries.

Conclusions

Aqua represents a significant shift in how DeFi thinks about liquidity design. For years, protocols have competed to optimize curves, fees, and routing mechanisms while quietly accepting that most liquidity remains idle. By offering a common liquidity architecture that enables a unique balance to serve different strategies, 1inch moves the conversation toward a more efficient and composed future.

The timing is remarkable. As the industry moves deeper into intent-driven execution, cross-chain liquidity and enterprise-grade infrastructure, the need for capital to work harder instead of standing still increases. Aqua fits right into this transformation. It provides developers with a new primitive to build on and gives liquidity providers a model where the return is aligned with actual usage instead of hashing.

Whether Aqua becomes a new standard will depend on how quickly the ecosystem adopts it, how builders integrate it and how the production version performs once it’s up and running. But what is certain is that the introduction of a protocol that rewrites the assumptions on AMM liquidity at the end of 2025 sets the tone for a very different 2026. If 1inch achieves the timeline set by Sergey, Aqua could impact not only individual protocols, but also the underlying DeFi infrastructure itself.