Tackling Liquidity Fragmentation

The Decentralized Finance (DeFi) ecosystem 1inch has introduced Aqua, a new shared liquidity protocol designed to solve capital inefficiencies across the market. Aqua aims to eliminate a major challenge for liquidity providers by allowing different trading strategies to access the same pool of tokens simultaneously. According to 1inch, this new approach removes the need to split or lock funds across various protocols.

The goal is to create deeper, more unified liquidity throughout the industry. By enabling multiple strategies to operate on the same capital, even smaller projects can support larger and more efficient transactions without fragmenting resources. A spokesperson for the project described the protocol as the start of a “new era of shared liquidity and unlimited capital efficiency,” where protocols no longer need to compete for funds.

Founder Vision and Early Access

“Aqua solves liquidity fragmentation for market makers by multiplying effective capital,” said 1inch Co-Founder Anton Bukov. “From now on, the only limit to your capital efficiency is your strategy.”

While the protocol’s user-facing frontend is scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2026, 1inch is giving developers a head start. The complete software development kit (SDK), libraries, and documentation for Aqua are available now for Web3 builders to begin exploring and integrating.

Co-founder Sergej Kunz suggested that Aqua has the potential to be as impactful as the platform’s original aggregation protocol, which launched in 2019. “With Aqua, 1inch is once again giving users back the power, empowering them to manage and optimize liquidity on their own terms,” he stated.