1inch Aqua Goes Live on 13 Chains, Lets $100K Back $300K in Quotes

1inch has switched on its Aqua shared liquidity protocol for all users across 13 EVM-compatible chains, letting a single wallet balance back multiple trading positions at once instead of splitting capital into separate pools. The DEX aggregator says a $100,000 balance can now quote three positions totaling a combined $300,000 in liquidity — not additional capital, but overlapping quotes drawn from the same funds.

The launch comes with a $1.37 million incentive package: the 1inch Foundation and DAO are allocating 10 million 1INCH tokens plus $500,000 in USDC over three months to bootstrap participation. Aqua supports full-range, concentrated and pegged positions across chains including Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain.

Why the design matters: idle capital, unclaimed fees

1inch commissioned research that found 85% of $1.84 billion tracked across major concentrated-liquidity exchanges sat underutilized in the first half of 2026. On average, roughly $542 million per week sat entirely outside active trading ranges, missing an estimated $150 million in annual fees, according to the firm.

Aqua is built to attack that inefficiency directly. Tokens stay in the liquidity provider’s own wallet rather than being locked in smart-contract deposits, and they only move when a matching swap actually executes. If the wallet balance can’t cover an order, the swap simply fails — so the “shared” liquidity is quoted exposure, not phantom capital.

1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz told CoinDesk the model lets “tokens stay in your wallet, under your control, while one balance backs multiple positions across different strategies rather than being split between smart contract deposits.”

From SDK preview to 13-chain rollout

1inch first unveiled Aqua a year ago as a software development kit with supporting libraries and documentation, aimed at developers building on top of the protocol. The public interface launched now opens that infrastructure directly to end users across all 13 supported chains simultaneously, rather than through a phased or invite-only rollout.

Before going live, 1inch says Aqua underwent eight independent security audits — a notable number for a protocol that concentrates a wallet’s liquidity behind several open positions at once, since a flaw in position accounting could, in theory, expose more of a user’s balance than intended across markets simultaneously.

What it means for liquidity providers

For active DeFi liquidity providers, Aqua’s pitch is capital efficiency: the same $100,000 that once backed a single concentrated position on one chain can now theoretically quote across three strategies without moving funds into multiple contracts. That could translate into more fee-generating exposure per dollar deposited, provided liquidity is actually pulled into trading ranges rather than sitting idle as 1inch’s own research suggests much of today’s DEX liquidity does.

The incentive program — 10 million 1INCH tokens and $500,000 in USDC spread over three months — gives early participants a direct reason to test the mechanism before assessing whether the promised capital efficiency holds up under real trading volume across all 13 chains.

Sources

• decrypt.co
• coindesk.com