1inch, a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, has made its Aqua protocol for shared DeFi liquidity publicly available after an extensive eight-month testing phase.
Liquidity providers: it’s time to wake up.
Use 1inch Aqua to find more activity in more markets, without letting your tokens out of your wallet.
Risk-controlled execution meets full self-custody.
No, you aren’t dreaming.
Here’s how it works:
— 1inch (@1inch) July 28, 2026
Aqua is a non-custodial system that allows liquidity providers to manage multiple trading positions from a single wallet without the need to transfer tokens into a pool.
The platform operates across 13 EVM networks, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, and Robinhood Chain.
It functions on a registry-based model:
- The liquidity provider connects their wallet and signs permission for a specific token balance.
- Aqua deducts the necessary tokens only when an exchange order matches the position's conditions, executing the trade and paying fees within a single atomic transaction.
- At all other times, the funds remain in the user's wallet.
1inch positions Aqua as one of the first alternatives to traditional pool structures, limiting the provider's risk to only the tokens actually held in their wallet, rather than the total value of all open positions. If the wallet does not have enough funds to cover a trade, the system simply does not engage with it.
For instance, a balance of $100,000 can support three positions with a total liquidity quote of $300,000 simultaneously.
The aggregator's team claims that Aqua addresses issues in current models related to custodial control during liquidity pool contributions and the dispersion of active capital across various protocols and price ranges.
According to Dune, approximately 85% of concentrated liquidity on major DEXs was used inefficiently in the first half of the year, amounting to $1.6 billion out of $1.84 billion in tracked assets.
In another analysis, the average share of concentrated liquidity outside active trading ranges over 26 weeks was 29.5%, which translates to about $542 million of idle capital per week across four protocols.
The 1inch Foundation has allocated 10 million 1INCH tokens as rewards for liquidity providers and plans to provide an additional 500,000 USDC from the DAO treasury.
In January, Wintermute noted the concentration of liquidity in Bitcoin and Ethereum.