Written by: Boaz Sobrado, Forbes

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Processing $814 billion in transactions sounds like it should be able to sustain a company. For leading DEX aggregator 1inch, it's still not enough.

Co-founder Sergej Kunz's assessment is straightforward: since launching in 2019, 1inch has matched over $800 billion in exchange volume but has yet to achieve profitability. The reason isn't a lack of users for the product, but rather that the overall DeFi space is still too small to support sustainable revenue.

This statement lays bare an industry fact that isn't often spoken: on-chain transaction volume can be large, but the profits on the ledger can be very small.

Large volume, thin profits

The numbers themselves are not bad. Dune Analytics data shows that by mid-2026, 1inch's cumulative exchange volume will be about $814 billion. In 2025 alone, it processed $214 billion, a year-on-year increase of 39%, approximately 114 million trades.

What 1inch does sounds like a "price comparison website for on-chain transactions": simultaneously scanning multiple decentralized exchanges, breaking down user trades, and sending them along the path with the best prices. Later, it added features like gasless transactions, MEV protection, and intent-based routing—where users simply say "what they want to swap," and professional market makers bid for execution.

These features benefit users but are difficult to directly convert into a revenue engine. The value of an aggregator precisely lies in helping users spend less money; as soon as it increases its cut, users can immediately bypass it and go straight to Uniswap, Curve, or local DEXs on various chains.

The token market clearly illustrates this misalignment. The current price of 1INCH is around $0.07 to $0.09, dropping about 99% from the peak of the DeFi bull market in 2021, with a market cap of about $100 million to $130 million. Having facilitated more than $800 billion in exchanges, the token is still at this level, indicating that the market does not price infrastructure based on "how large the transaction volume is," but rather on "whether it can retain profits."

From hackathon project to multi-chain pipeline

1inch originated from a hackathon in New York in May 2019, created by Kunz and co-founder Anton Bukov. The initial idea was simple: simultaneously scan multiple DEXs and send an exchange to the one with the best quote.

Seven years later, it is no longer just a "small exchange tool." The protocol now supports over 13 chains, with official statements claiming routing sources from more than 400 DEXs; Fusion changed transactions to be intent-based, and Fusion+ extended this model across chains, so users do not have to bridge themselves. Gateways like Coinbase and Ledger also use it as an execution layer.

Real-world assets represent another growth area. After partnering with Ondo Finance, by March 2026, tokenized assets routed through 1inch will have exceeded $3 billion in transactions. Tokenized government bonds and stocks, for instance, tend to be larger, more stable, and closer to institutional orders. For aggregators, this business model resembles "one that can retain fees" more than typical altcoin exchanges.

Aqua, to be launched soon and gradually implemented, shifts the focus from "helping buyers find routes" to "helping sellers utilize their funds." Kunz has publicly stated multiple times that 83% to 95% of the liquidity in top AMM pools remains idle most of the time; within concentrated liquidity, approximately 85% of funds are not within effective price ranges. Money is locked in pools but is unable to earn transaction fees. Aqua aims to create a shared liquidity layer: assets can stay in wallets while serving multiple strategies instead of being split into millions of isolated pools.

The broadening product line precisely reflects one truth: relying solely on spot aggregation makes it hard to sustain itself.

Profit paradox: the higher the fees, the more users leave

The business model of aggregators is inherently awkward. They must be cheaper than the exchanges they aggregate; otherwise, users have no reason to go through them. Yet they can't remain free forever, or they risk depleting their coffers and early funding.

If they charge, users migrate to directly connecting DEXs; if they do not charge, they wait for the market to grow. 1inch is currently stuck in the middle.

Uniswap has demonstrated this. As the DEX with the highest trading volume, it debated for years before switching on the charging mechanism. Even protocols that have liquidity in their own pools are cautious, making the space even narrower for aggregators that rely on "sending traffic to others" to survive.

There are profitable on-chain trading venues in the industry. Perpetual contract DEXs can create stable cash flows from liquidation, funding fees, and market-making spreads; spot aggregation is more like a public pipeline: many users, but the pipeline itself takes little. The significance of 1inch's cumulative $800 billion is more about proving that this pipeline has been built wide enough, rather than showing that it has started charging.

The 39% growth in transaction volume in 2025 at least indicates that demand is still growing. However, demand growth and profit growth are not the same thing. If fees remain close to zero, even if transaction volume doubles, the profit statement won't automatically turn positive.

What to watch next

For 1inch, the key focus shouldn't be reporting "how many billion pairs matched," but rather whether three things can turn into revenue.

First, can Aqua convert idle liquidity into chargeable shared capital? If LP efficiency can truly be increased, 1inch would no longer just be a routing layer, but a liquidity layer, changing the revenue logic.

Second, can RWA routing convert from "having volume" to "having fees"? Tokenized government bonds and stocks, being larger and more institutionally oriented, are also more willing to pay for execution quality and compliance pathways. Routing for these types of assets may prove more profitable than matching ordinary exchanges.

Third, can B2B interfaces replace C2C fee exemptions? 1inch also claims that its API and infrastructure services are primary revenue sources—wallets, brokers, and institutions embed exchanges into their products, paying per call or execution. Continuing to acquire customers cheaply on the retail side while the enterprise side is responsible for sustaining the company is the most realistic path for aggregators.

Kunz's assessment can be interpreted on two levels. One level is lamenting: despite handling such a large volume, it still incurs losses. The other level is an industry judgment: the scale of DeFi users, institutions, and real-world assets has yet to reach a critical point where it can sustain a batch of infrastructure companies. The pipeline has been laid out; the water is just not full enough.

The $800 billion proves that decentralized exchanges are no longer a small experiment. It does not yet prove, however, that this sector can begin to generate profits according to traditional financial standards.