1inch routes over $800B in trades, co-founder says DeFi still too small to turn a profit

Processing $814 billion in trades sounds like the kind of number that would keep the lights on. For 1inch, the leading decentralized exchange aggregator, it apparently hasn’t been enough.

Co-founder Sergej Kunz has stated that despite routing more than $800 billion in cumulative swap volume since the protocol’s 2019 launch, 1inch has not turned a profit. The reason, according to Kunz, is straightforward: DeFi is still too small to generate sustainable revenue.

Massive volume, missing margins

The numbers themselves are genuinely impressive. According to Dune Analytics data, 1inch’s cumulative swap volume reached approximately $814 billion by mid-2026. In 2025 alone, the protocol processed $214 billion in trades, a 39% increase year-over-year, spanning roughly 114 million transactions.

The core challenge for DEX aggregators like 1inch is that they route trades to wherever users get the best price across decentralized exchanges. 1inch has leaned into gasless trading and MEV protection as differentiators, features that benefit users but don’t exactly scream “revenue engine.”

The 1INCH token currently trades between $0.07 and $0.09, representing a roughly 99% decline from its all-time high set during the 2021 DeFi bull run. The protocol’s market capitalization sits in the $100 million to $130 million range.

From hackathon project to multi-chain infrastructure

1inch started at a hackathon in New York in May 2019, built by Kunz and co-founder Anton Bukov. The original concept was simple but powerful: scan multiple DEXs simultaneously and route a user’s trade to whichever offered the best price.

Since then, the protocol has evolved considerably. It now supports more than 13 blockchains, a far cry from its Ethereum-only origins. Its Fusion technology introduced intent-based execution, a system where users express what trade they want and professional market makers called resolvers compete to fill it. Fusion+ extended this model across chains, enabling cross-chain swaps without requiring users to bridge tokens manually.

The protocol has also moved into tokenized real-world asset trading through a partnership with Ondo Finance. That collaboration had generated over $3 billion in cumulative tokenized volume by March 2026.

Another forthcoming product, the Aqua protocol, aims to create shared liquidity pools to help address fragmented liquidity across chains and venues.

The profitability paradox

The challenge for protocols like 1inch is that their fee structures need to be competitive with, or lower than, the venues they aggregate. Charging meaningful fees would push users to go directly to the underlying DEXs. Not charging fees means burning through treasury or venture capital while hoping the market eventually grows large enough to sustain a business.

Uniswap, the largest DEX by volume, only recently activated its fee switch after years of debate.

The 39% volume growth in 2025 suggests the demand side of the equation is trending in the right direction.

What to watch

The Aqua protocol launch will be a key milestone to monitor. The RWA integration with Ondo Finance is another signal worth tracking. Tokenized treasuries and other real-world assets represent one of the fastest-growing segments in DeFi, and being the routing layer for that activity could prove more lucrative than routing other swaps.

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