1inch Unveils Aqua — a Unified Liquidity Protocol for DeFi

• Aqua allows multiple DeFi strategies to work with the same capital without locking in funds.
• Developers got early access to SDKs, libraries, and documentation.
• 1inch launched a rewards program of up to $100,000 for contributing and finding bugs.

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1inch ‘s DeFi ecosystem team introduced Aqua, a new liquidity management layer. As the developers noted, it should change the principles of strategies in the decentralized finance segment.

Aqua is a shared liquidity protocol that eliminates the need to allocate or block assets between multiple pools.

In current models, each pool requires a separate deposit, causing projects to compete for the volume of locked-in assets (TVL) and face capital constraints. Aqua turns a user’s wallet into a self-custodial AMM, allowing multiple strategies to be applied to a single set of tokens, 1inch said.

Each strategy accesses liquidity on its own parameters and can conduct atomic swaps based on internal execution rules. This is how a multiplicative effect is created, with one asset running multiple strategies at once.

According to the team, this increases capital efficiency and liquidity availability in the ecosystem.

For developers, the protocol greatly simplifies product creation, 1inch noted. Aqua removes the need for deposit, withdrawal and fund management logic, allowing strategies to interact with the balance sheet directly.

Developers can either build solutions from scratch or use off-the-shelf tools, including the SwapVM partner protocol.

The launch includes a rewards program — 1inch is offering up to $100,000 for contributing to the development of the protocol and identifying bugs. The team expects that the participation of external developers will accelerate the adaptation of Aqua and allow faster testing of new models of working with liquidity.

The public release of the project for users is scheduled for Q1 2026. Until then, developers can test the protocol via GitHub, explore ready-made tools and suggest improvements.

1inch emphasizes that Aqua is designed to solve the problem of liquidity fragmentation at an early stage. According to 1inch co-founder Anton Bukov, “the only constraint on capital efficiency is now strategy.”

Co-founder Sergey Kunz added that Aqua creates the foundation for a more flexible and scalable DeFi, giving users back control over liquidity.

The launch of Aqua becomes one of the most technically significant updates to the 1inch ecosystem in recent years, according to the developers. The protocol is designed to develop a wide range of products, from new AMM strategies to yield automation tools, which can make small liquidity projects more competitive.