1inch has opened its Aqua liquidity layer to the public, introducing a self-custodial system that lets liquidity providers quote across several trading positions while relying on one wallet balance for settlement. The release moves Aqua beyond the developer-only access phase that began in November and places it on 13 Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain.
Aqua’s central design allows providers to make more liquidity available on paper than the amount of tokens sitting in any single position, without borrowing assets or transferring them into a traditional liquidity pool. A provider connects a wallet, approves a token balance and can create multiple positions backed by that available balance. The tokens are pulled only when a matching swap is executed.
Under the model described by 1inch, a wallet holding $100,000 could support three positions collectively quoting $300,000 of liquidity. The $300,000 figure represents potential quotations across different venues or strategies, rather than three separately funded pools. A trade can settle only if the wallet holds sufficient assets when the order is matched.
That constraint gives Aqua a different risk profile from leveraged market-making systems. Providers cannot be forced to fund more than the balance available in their wallet, although multiple positions may compete for the same inventory during periods of heavy activity. If one fill reduces the balance needed for another quoted order, the later order would not execute at the advertised size.
tokens remain in providers’ wallets until a swap settles
Aqua functions as a registry rather than a token vault, according to 1inch. Users connect their wallets and grant token approvals, while assets remain in those wallets unless an order is filled. Swap execution and fee settlement occur in a single atomic transaction, meaning either all elements of the trade settle together or the transaction fails.
The approach could appeal to liquidity providers who want to avoid moving tokens among multiple pools, contracts and networks before they can quote markets. It also changes the operational task from allocating fixed balances to each position into managing a shared wallet inventory and the permissions that give Aqua access to that inventory.
Revoking an approval stops new fills once the revocation is confirmed on-chain, 1inch said. The company also said Aqua does not hold user tokens. Those characteristics reduce the custody exposure associated with depositing assets into a protocol-controlled pool, but they do not remove market risk, smart-contract risk or the possibility that transaction costs exceed earned fees. Fees are not guaranteed.
The public version includes position visualization tools, batch position creation, cross-chain provider profiles, sub-wallets and a liquidity leaderboard. Together, those features suggest 1inch is targeting active providers who run several strategies and need a way to track their available inventory across supported chains.
idle concentrated liquidity is the target
The launch is framed around a persistent problem in concentrated-liquidity automated market makers: capital placed outside an active trading range cannot execute trades or earn swap fees until the market price returns to that range.
Research commissioned by 1inch and published through Dune found that about 85% of concentrated liquidity across the major decentralized exchanges it tracked was underutilized during the first half of 2026. The analysis measured $1.6 billion of $1.84 billion in tracked liquidity as underutilized.
Across 26 weeks and four protocols, the research found that an average 29.5% of concentrated liquidity sat outside the active trading range. That equated to roughly $542 million in idle liquidity in an average week, according to the Dune analysis.
Aqua does not eliminate the price-range problem. A provider can still quote at levels where no trades occur, and a losing position can still accumulate an unwanted asset as prices move. Its intended advantage is that a provider need not lock separate token balances behind every possible position. The same wallet inventory can support quotes in several places, subject to the balance check at execution.
That distinction could make capital deployment more flexible for providers managing fragmented liquidity across chains. It also means headline liquidity figures need careful interpretation: a collection of Aqua positions may display combined quoted depth greater than the wallet’s immediately available inventory. The system’s matching rules are designed to prevent an unfunded fill, but they cannot guarantee that every displayed quote remains executable after other trades consume the shared balance.
rewards program adds 10 million 1inch commitment
1inch launched a liquidity rewards program alongside the public release. The program is delivered through Merkl and led by Degensoft, according to 1inch.
The 1inch Foundation has committed 10 million 1INCH tokens for liquidity-provider rewards. Separately, the 1inch DAO has a proposal to add 500,000 USDC, although that allocation depends on a governance vote.
Reward programs can attract initial liquidity and help new market structures develop tighter quoted markets. They can also make returns difficult to assess once incentives decline, particularly where providers must account for token-price movements, swaps that alter their inventory and network fees on 13 separate chains. Aqua’s shared-balance design may lower the amount of capital that must sit inactive, but it does not turn market making into a passive yield product.
1inch said Aqua underwent eight independent security audits, naming OpenZeppelin, Nethermind, Hexens and Theori among the firms involved. The public launch now gives providers a chance to test whether the system’s balance-backed quoting can improve usable liquidity without creating the operational complexity of continuously redistributing assets among pools.
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