DEX aggregator 1inch has opened public access to the Aqua protocol for “shared” DeFi liquidity after an eight-month testing period.
Liquidity providers: it’s time to wake up.
Use 1inch Aqua to find more activity in more markets, without letting your tokens out of your wallet.
Risk-controlled execution meets full self-custody.
No, you aren’t dreaming.
Here’s how it works:
⬇️ pic.twitter.com/F7CJeikteJ
— 1inch (@1inch) July 28, 2026
Aqua is a non-custodial system that allows liquidity providers to maintain multiple trading positions from a single wallet without sending tokens to a pool.
The platform is launched across 13 EVM networks, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain, and Robinhood Chain.
The protocol operates on a registry principle:
- The liquidity provider connects their wallet and authorizes a specific token balance.
- Aqua only deducts tokens when an exchange order matches the position conditions, executing the trade and paying fees within a single atomic transaction.
- At other times, the funds remain in the user’s wallet.
1inch describes Aqua as one of the first alternatives to the traditional pool structure. The mechanism limits the provider’s risk to only the tokens actually in their wallet, not the total volume of all open positions. If there are insufficient funds in the wallet to cover a trade, the system simply does not access it.
For example, a $100,000 balance can simultaneously support three positions with a total liquidity quote of $300,000.
The aggregator team claims that Aqua addresses issues in current models related to the transfer of custodial control when funds are added to liquidity pools and the simultaneous dispersion of active capital across different protocols and price ranges.
According to Dune, in the first half of the year, about 85% of concentrated liquidity on major DEXs was used inefficiently, amounting to $1.6 billion out of $1.84 billion of tracked funds.
By another calculation method, the average share of concentrated liquidity outside the active trading range over 26 weeks was 29.5%. This equates to an average of $542 million of idle capital per week across four protocols.
1inch Foundation has allocated 10 million 1INCH tokens for liquidity provider rewards. The company plans to provide an additional 500,000 USDC from the DAO treasury.
Earlier in January, Wintermute noted the concentration of liquidity in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
