1inch announced on July 28 the full public launch of Aqua, a self-custodial shared liquidity layer for decentralized finance. The launch addresses a liquidity inefficiency problem: a Dune study found roughly 85% of liquidity on major decentralized exchanges sits idle — around $1.6 billion doing nothing. Aqua lets liquidity providers use the same wallet balance across multiple positions without locking assets in a pool. A developer version shipped in November 2025 and underwent roughly a year of stress-testing before opening to the public.
Dune Study Finds $1.6 Billion in Idle DEX Liquidity
A study conducted by analytics firm Dune found that roughly 85% of the liquidity on major decentralized exchanges sits idle — around $1.6 billion in all, doing nothing. Sergej Kunz, co-founder of 1inch, said, "We did together with Dune some research in terms of how much of the liquidity sits idle in the Uniswap pools, for example, and even Curve pools. And it looks like 85% of the liquidity sits idle and it's not working."
Dune rebuilt every position in about 200 top pools across Uniswap v3 and v4, PancakeSwap v3 and Aerodrome over 26 weekly snapshots on seven chains between Jan. 6 and June 30. It found roughly $1.6 billion of the $1.84 billion in average weekly liquidity was underutilized, with about $542 million sitting fully out of range in an average week and a third of positions untouched for 90 days or more.
Aqua Operates as Self-Custodial Registry
Aqua operates as a registry. A provider connects a wallet and approves a token balance, then creates positions that can draw on it. When a swap order matches a position, the protocol pulls the needed tokens from the wallet and pushes back the received tokens and fees in a single atomic transaction. The rest of the time, the tokens simply stay in the wallet, fully under the owner's control.
Kunz said, "This is not like providing in a pool. You have your assets in your wallet and you just define your trading strategies. Just imagine you have 10,000 USDC and 10,000 in Ethereum. If you put it in a Uniswap pool, these assets are locked. You cannot use the same assets for another pair. But in Aqua you can."
According to 1inch, a $100,000 balance can support three positions collectively quoting $300,000 of liquidity, but any swap can only ever execute against the assets actually held in the wallet. A provider's exposure is capped by the tokens they hold, not by the combined size of every position they open, and if the wallet cannot cover a swap, Aqua simply does not call on it. Positions can be full-range, concentrated or pegged, with no lock-up, and can be opened or closed at will.
1inch Launches Aqua Across 13 EVM Chains
Aqua goes live across 13 EVM chains from day one, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain. To seed activity, 1inch is pairing the launch with an incentive program delivered through Merkl: the 1inch Foundation has committed 10 million 1INCH tokens in provider rewards, with an additional 500,000 USDC from the 1inch DAO.
The protocol also ships with a liquidity leaderboard, an incentives screen, liquidity-map visualizations, batch position creation, cross-chain provider profiles and sub-wallets, with an AI-assisted provisioning flow via the 1inch Business MCP listed as coming soon. 1inch says Aqua underwent eight independent security audits, from firms including OpenZeppelin, Nethermind, Hexens and Theori.
Developers Can Build Custom Strategies on Aqua
The architecture is deliberately open, in the spirit of Uniswap v4's hooks. Developers can write their own strategies and money markets can plug in adapters. Kunz said, "Theoretically it's possible to build a strategy on Aqua for Aave. You could leverage your positions and loop into Aave. You could theoretically make out of your ten thousand USDC thirty or forty thousand USDC."
FAQ
What did 1inch launch on July 28?
1inch announced the full public launch of Aqua, a self-custodial shared liquidity layer that lets DeFi liquidity providers use the same wallet balance across multiple positions without locking assets in a pool.
How much DEX liquidity sits idle according to Dune's study?
Dune's study found roughly 85% of liquidity on major decentralized exchanges sits idle — around $1.6 billion of the $1.84 billion in average weekly liquidity was underutilized, with about $542 million sitting fully out of range in an average week.
