Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch has announced Aqua, a protocol designed to unify liquidity pools across a wide range of decentralized finance markets.

In Tuesday’s announcement, 1inch said Aqua lets liquidity providers authorize multiple strategies against a single wallet inventory, while the assets remain in the wallet until a trade is settled rather than being deposited into a specific liquidity pool. The protocol has been deployed on 13 blockchains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Robinhood Chain and BNB Chain.

Source: 1inch

According to the company, Aqua includes an integrated package of features such as a generalized onchain registry, wallet-backed automated market making strategies, atomic settlement and consumer-facing position management. The structure makes liquidity more broadly available because it is not tied to one protocol, but the assets do not multiply, since they can be involved in only one operation at a time.

For example, a user supplying $10,000 of liquidity can advertise $10,000 on three protocols for a total of $30,000, but only $10,000 of simultaneous trades can occur with those funds. The setup is similar to coordinated overbooking and may improve capital utilization if the liquidity is unlikely to be needed for multiple operations at the same time.

A 1inch spokesperson told Cointelegraph that Aqua can be used by resolvers holding a 1inch-issued access credential, because not all protocols are supported.

The spokesperson also said that all positions are quoted against the market maker’s live wallet balance, so after a fill, the remaining position is quoted against whatever is left. “If a swap would exceed the actual balance, it reverts atomically,” the spokesperson said.

In a related development, and pending tokenholder vote approval, the protocol will allocate 500,000 USDC (USDC) to incentives for Aqua adoption, along with 10 million 1inch (1INCH) tokens, worth roughly $830,000 at the time of writing. “The initiative is designed to accelerate liquidity growth and swap activity across supported pairs,” according to 1inch’s announcement.

The rollout adds another cross-chain liquidity layer at a time when DeFi protocols continue to compete for capital efficiency and trader execution, especially across ecosystems where users often need liquidity spread over multiple venues. Aqua’s design reflects that broader push by keeping funds in the wallet while still allowing them to be referenced by several strategies, while preserving settlement rules that prevent the same balance from being used beyond what is actually available.

The announcement comes after a statement earlier this month from Anton Bukov, a co-founder of 1inch, who said he was “fired” from 1inch in November 2025 after “push[ing] for change” in the company’s management and operations.