1inch puts Aqua in public hands across 13 EVM chains
The shared-liquidity system lets providers keep assets in their wallets until a swap matches a position, while a new incentive programme will distribute 10 million 1INCH and 500,000 USDC.
1inch has opened Aqua to public users, turning an eight-month developer release into a live test of whether DeFi liquidity can be shared without first being deposited into a pool. The company said in its July 28 announcement that Aqua went live across 13 EVM chains and lets a provider use one wallet balance across multiple liquidity positions.
The product is aimed at a familiar DeFi problem: capital can be spread across pools and price ranges even when demand is concentrated somewhere else. 1inch's own technical explanation describes Aqua as a registry. A user approves a token balance, creates positions and leaves the assets in the wallet. When a swap matches the conditions, the protocol pulls the requested tokens and returns the received assets and fees in one atomic transaction.
A different custody pattern
That design changes the starting point for a liquidity provider. In a conventional pool, capital is deposited before it can quote; in Aqua, the balance remains under the provider's control until an eligible trade uses it. 1inch says the same balance can support several positions at once. Its example says a $100,000 balance could collectively quote $300,000 across three positions, but that is a model of capital efficiency, not a promise about realized fills or returns.
The trade-off moves into the execution layer. Providers still need to understand the permissions they grant, the contracts that can move approved tokens, the conditions that trigger a fill and what happens when a strategy overlaps another position. Self-custody limits one category of intermediary exposure; it does not remove smart-contract, market, settlement or counterparty risk.
Incentives will shape the first data
1inch is launching the network with a reward programme led by Degensoft and delivered through Merkl. The 1inch Foundation committed 10 million 1INCH, while the 1inch DAO added 500,000 USDC. The campaign is intended to bring providers and swap activity to supported pairs, which means early volume will carry an incentive component.
The useful scoreboard is therefore more specific than total value connected. Fill rates, quoted depth, fee income after rewards, failed executions, contract incidents and activity after the programme ends will show whether shared liquidity is doing more work than capital sitting in isolated pools.
