1inch, a leading decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol best known for its DEX aggregation technology that routes trades across multiple liquidity sources for optimal pricing, has announced the launch of its new shared liquidity protocol, Aqua. The protocol is designed to improve efficiency and unlock liquidity for users across networks. Sergej Kunz, co-founder and CEO at 1inch, joined TheStreet Roundtable to discuss the launch and explain where the efficiency gains are being realized.

RWAs Need Liquidity

Kunz frames Aqua as a new model of liquidity provisioning built for the emerging wave of tokenized assets. "RWAs are coming into DeFi, and RWAs need our infrastructure to be able to have proper liquidity in our space," he said.

A recent study commissioned by 1inch found that roughly 80% of liquidity on decentralized exchanges sits idle at any given time, equating to approximately $1.6 billion that is not generating returns. The figure underscores a well-known limitation of conventional automated market maker (AMM) designs, where liquidity is locked in discrete two-token pools and can only facilitate trades between those specific assets. For thin and newer markets such as tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), that level of inefficiency can be fatal to growth.

The Killer Use-Case

Tokenized equities have seen explosive growth globally, despite not yet being available to U.S. investors. The tokenization of real-world assets has drawn participation from major financial institutions, with the sector expanding beyond early experiments into live trading venues. For users outside the U.S., hundreds of tokenized stocks are already available for purchase through platforms including Robinhood, Kraken, Ondo, and others.

"You can just buy all the top ten RWAs from Backed's xStocks, Robinhood or whatever, and make trading positions among them," Kunz said. "You could, theoretically, set up a trading pair for SpaceX and Apple stock. And then you have SpaceX–Tesla, and then Tesla–Apple, and then Microsoft. It's a construct that allows you to benefit from the volume that comes from the movement of the RWAs."

Traditional brokerages typically only allow investors to trade each stock against dollars. What Kunz describes is a system of direct asset-to-asset markets, where a single pool of holdings backs every trading pair simultaneously, with the liquidity provider collecting fees on every transaction.

Why Aqua Is Needed

When asked why this requires the Aqua protocol, Kunz explained: "When these RWAs are isolated in single two-token-pair pools, it's not possible. So here we have additional efficiency."

The RWA sector has repeatedly promised "stocks on-chain" but has largely delivered stock-versus-dollar trading with additional intermediary steps. Kunz's pitch represents one of the first structurally novel capabilities that tokenized equities could enable: markets between assets themselves, priced continuously and supported by a single pool of reusable capital. Whether that capability translates into adoption will depend on regulatory clarity in major markets and whether enough tokenized equity issuers and liquidity providers participate to make the shared pools viable.

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jul 31, 2026.