Welcome to Slate Sunday, CryptoSlate’s weekly function showcasing in-depth interviews, professional evaluation, and thought-provoking op-eds that transcend the headlines to discover the concepts and voices shaping the way forward for crypto.
Ask 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz about the place DeFi is headed, and also you’ll get extra than simply your commonplace reply about monetary inclusion or a hedge in opposition to fiat collapse.
Kunz isn’t one to mince his phrases, and he dives into the way forward for the sector like a hunter monitoring his prey; centered, relentless, and fully undaunted. For Kunz, DeFi’s future is seamless and, in the end, peer-to-peer, delivering a UX so easy it makes centralized exchanges out of date.
Because the main DEX aggregator and DeFi ecosystem, full with a glossy new rebrand, 1inch just lately built-in with Solana and launched native, decentralized swaps spanning over 12 EVM networks. Smiling broadly, Kunz lays it out:
“We acknowledged that we have to develop; the entire DeFi area is not only on Ethereum anymore.”
It’s an indication of the instances. From its early days in 2019, 1inch was strictly an Ethereum story, using the primary wave of DeFi innovation. Kunz recollects:
“We began on Ethereum. It was solely Ethereum. And we added extra EVM-compatible chains like Binance Good Chain, Polygon, all of the layers.”
Now, 14 chains later (with Solana becoming a member of the pack in April of this 12 months), one factor is obvious: DeFi’s borders get blurrier by the week, and his imaginative and prescient of seamless interoperability between ecosystems is not a distant dream.
“We began to mix the DeFi area, all of the chains collectively, and now rising to non-EVM suitable chains. We may also add Bitcoin and all different blockchains that we will combine for the cross-chain swaps, so we will unite all of the liquidity in a single single place.”
If it sounds bold, that’s in all probability as a result of it’s. Kunz isn’t the kind of particular person to accept second finest. And why keep on with fragmented liquidity when one platform can unite all of it?
1inch: trustless swaps and seamless execution
Kunz’s relentless cross-chain focus comes paired with a laser eye on each safety and value. He’s emphatic about consumer autonomy and respecting the core pillars of decentralized finance (like eradicating the intermediary).
“Our worth proposition is non-custodial swaps, which implies nobody must belief anybody. And the second worth proposition is the perfect execution on essentially the most liquidity that’s out there on the market.”
However uniting liquidity means extra than simply technical gymnastics. There’s a longer-term objective, and it’s about rendering centralized exchanges to a footnote in crypto historical past. He affirms:
“Theoretically, nobody wants centralized exchanges by utilizing 1inch.”
Kunz insists that the magic of 1inch lies in consumer expertise, unifying the UX throughout a number of ecosystems and chains.
However how shut is DeFi to that legendary single-click, chain-agnostic movement that web2 customers need?
“We’re virtually there,” he says. “Proper now, whenever you do a cross-chain swap, you simply join your pockets, you click on, and also you affirm. You don’t do any transaction by your self.”
Intent-based protocols, or ‘fixing your personal downside’
Behind the scenes, it’s taken innovation. The 1inch protocol was invented in 2022 as a way of constructing DeFi fairer and combating “sandwich assaults,” the actual model of front-running that haunts liquidity suppliers and merchants alike. He explains:
“We name it an intent-based protocol for swaps.”
That phrase, ‘intent-based protocol’, has been cropping up in all places recently. Uniswap X has written about it, and, actually, Kunz factors out that Uniswap X relies on 1inch’s thought; it’s even cited of their whitepaper.
“We will create a protocol that sells consumer orders to market makers, arbitrage merchants, and let the market makers compete between one another.”
Kunz compares 1inch’s method to conventional exchanges just like the Nasdaq, in that folks create orders and market makers fill them. What’s totally different right here is giving the order on to an open, aggressive ecosystem {of professional} merchants who come first, settle first, and in addition partially fill. The numbers show the purpose:
“We’ve use instances the place somebody exchanged 12 million USDT to Ethereum and received $135,000 extra. In the event that they did it by themselves utilizing a DEX straight, they might get much less.”
He recounts his personal expertise with sandwich assaults, saying:
“I used to be sandwiched… front-run by a malicious alternate. And I acknowledged, okay, we have to repair this.”
The intent-based protocol was, due to this fact, born from necessity, he says with a smile:
“I solved my very own downside. Nobody can sandwich you or manipulate the liquidity.”
From DeFi to the broader crypto area
The dialog turns to stablecoins and the consumer expertise gaps between chains. I level out that, regardless of the enhancements, DeFi continues to be fiendishly tough for normies to navigate, switching between networks and organising wallets. He shrugs and says the final word objective is for customers to by no means want to fret about networks or bridges.
“It ought to be that customers shouldn’t care concerning the chain… they need to simply care what they’ve in USDC.”
Because the roadmap stretches ahead, development is the one certainty for Kunz.
“We unite DeFi liquidity… after which we go to the crypto area. We combine Bitcoin. You should buy any sh*t coin, memecoin, no matter coin. You should buy actual Bitcoin, you get it in your pockets, and you too can promote Bitcoin. Identical for Litecoin, similar for Ripple.”
1inch’s imaginative and prescient is obvious: to develop from the “small DeFi area” to the broader web3 world, and ultimately contact conventional finance as properly. He elaborates:
“Plenty of corporations proper now, all of the banks, do tokenization of real-world belongings, however there’s no secondary buying and selling place the place you’ll be able to commerce them in a single place. It is advisable to go to each issuer, possibly to a financial institution, to a single financial institution, for instance, to purchase tokenized wine. You can not simply provide it like that. You want correct regulation for that… Our plan is to supply our protocols and our software program service APIs for establishments to alternate such belongings in a extremely protected, non-custodial method.”
The showdown with centralized exchanges
And what’s on the quick horizon for 1inch? Kunz explains that the one-to-three-year plan is to “push ahead,” combine extra chains, go extra cross-chain, and supply a extra seamless expertise. Lastly, he says with a glint in his eye:
“To battle, check, and compete with centralized exchanges.”
Did I point out that Kunz was bold?
Whereas most on the helm of CEXs envision a world the place DeFi and CeFi coexist, the juggernauts of decentralized finance don’t simply neglect being front-run.
And, with centralized alternate spot quantity dropping practically 28% in Q2 2025, CEXs ought to be sleeping with one eye open. DeFi is coming for his or her lunch.
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