Sergej Kunz, Co-Founder of 1inch
His first introduction to the crypto space dates back to 2011, when he attempted to mine Litecoin. In late 2016, he built his first Ethereum mining farm. After mining Ethereum for a couple of years, he launched a YouTube channel called CryptoManiac, where he conducted live security audits of smart contracts.
During one of the live streams, Anton Bukov, who would later co-found 1inch, joined in. The two developers hit it off, and over the next six months, Anton became a co-host of the channel, now renamed CryptoManiacs. Together, they participated in 17 hackathons worldwide. Later, at a hackathon in New York in May 2019, they developed an aggregator MVP for decentralized exchanges.
We had a conversation with Sergej Kunz at TOKEN2049 in Singapore about 1inch’s major rebrand, their strategic shift to a B2B infrastructure provider, and the upcoming launch of their highly capital-efficient protocol, 1inch Aqua.
Sergej Kunz is the Co-Founder of 1inch. Under his guidance, alongside his co-founder Anton Bukov, the project has evolved far beyond its hackathon origins to become a cornerstone of DeFi infrastructure, offering a suite of APIs and services for both retail and institutional clients, including major players like Coinbase.
1inch started as one of the first DEX aggregators in DeFi. The recent major rebrand and strategic focus on becoming a sustainable, business-to-business provider are part of Sergej’s vision to position 1inch as the foundational layer for the next wave of Web3 development.
Read more about the evolution of one of DeFi’s biggest aggregators in the interview below.
1inch has expanded beyond EVM chains by integrating the Solana network. What technical hurdles did you encounter in building on Solana’s unique architecture, and how does this change the way aggregation works compared to EVM networks?
Last year, we decided to add non-EVM support and initially planned for the Solana integration to take the entire year. Instead, we formed a special task force of 30 people, who built and audited the intent-based swap for Solana in just one month. However, Solana’s architecture doesn’t support everything we do on EVM, so we had to completely rebuild our architecture from scratch for the network.
On Solana, a user makes a transaction to announce their order, and a market maker then executes it. This differs from other models on Solana, where users can get sandwiched by MEV bots. We were able to eliminate MEV for the user with our model and published our source code to prove it. It was a high-risk project, but it works very well. We also rebuilt our cross-chain swap protocol from the ground up to support the Solana network, which now sees a daily volume between $5 million and $10 million.
You’ve just unveiled a rebrand at TOKEN2049, shifted to 1inch.com, and are pursuing ISO 27001 and SOC 2 to court institutions. What concrete product and go-to-market changes should users and B2B partners expect next, and how does “We move forward as 1” translate into the roadmap?
1inch started as a fun hackathon idea. The original branding, with the focused unicorn and rainbows, reflected that. It was playful, but it also created too much noise and disruption. People focused on the mascot rather than on our core identity, which is that “we are the swap.” We invented the highly efficient swap, and we needed our brand to reflect that.
Therefore, we decided to cut out the noise and create a clear, organized, and focused identity that is easy for everyone to understand, especially for business and institutional clients. The old branding might have looked childish or like a scam to a serious company. Now, I believe everyone sees this as a serious business built on a solid project.
As more platforms tap into 1inch APIs, are you seeing aggregation shift from a user-facing product to back-end infrastructure for the wider industry? What risks or limitations come with becoming this kind of invisible layer?
Our strategy to serve institutional and business customers was set up two and a half years ago. We have just announced 1inch Business, our self-service portal for developers and institutions to access all the APIs we use internally. This includes everything from checking wallet balances and tracking portfolio PnL to executing trades.
Our focus is on positioning ourselves as the core infrastructure provider for anyone aiming to build in Web3. This business is our primary source of revenue, and it is what enables us to remain a sustainable company.
1inch has onboarded major partners, including Coinbase and OKX, through its API. How do these partnerships enhance execution quality for users, and do they blur the lines between centralized and decentralized liquidity sources?
Our goal is to serve more partners through our infrastructure. We’ve already onboarded MetaMask, Trust Wallet, and Coinbase Wallet, and now, Coinbase’s main centralized app uses our API to facilitate DEX trades. For users, this means they get access to deep liquidity and efficient trade execution, facilitated by our protocol, directly within the platforms they already use. These integrations represent a significant step for us because they validate our role as a foundational layer for Web3.
What role do RWAs play within 1inch’s liquidity aggregation model, and how does their inclusion impact risk management, pricing efficiency, and institutional adoption?
We already provide access to RWAs in eligible markets through our APIs, and for us, it’s the same as any other token. Our core product is the intent market we’ve developed. It has two sides: the user who wants to exchange an asset, and the professional market makers and arbitrage traders who compete to fill that order.
Our protocol is a minimal layer that facilitates this competition, using a patented Dutch auction model similar to NASDAQ to ensure users receive the best execution regardless of the asset type.
How do you see aggregation evolving in the next two to three years? Will it remain about price discovery, or will it expand into broader financial infrastructure?
We see ourselves as the infrastructure, which is why we focus so heavily on our APIs and B2B services. For us, the evolution is to become the foundational layer on which other protocols and applications are built.
Our upcoming 1inch Aqua protocol is a perfect example of this. It’s a new, open architecture designed for others to build very advanced and highly secure DeFi protocols on top of it. So, it’s definitely expanding into broader financial markets infrastructure.
You’re preparing a major reveal at TOKEN2049. Without giving away details, can you share what problem space this announcement is designed to address, and how it extends 1inch’s role in the ecosystem?
We’ve already achieved three major milestones this year, but I’ve asked the team to deliver one more: 1inch Aqua, which we plan to launch by the end of this year. It addresses the problem of capital efficiency. It’s a new, open architecture designed to serve as a foundation for building very advanced and highly secure DeFi protocols.
We will first deliver one protocol based on this new architecture, and early next year, we will open up the architecture for everyone to use. You’ll understand the name when we release it, but I can say that it has the highest capital efficiency DeFi has ever seen. Not even Uniswap can come close.