1inch launches Aqua publicly with 10 million 1INCH and 500,000 USDC incentives

1inch has opened Aqua to all users, expanding the self-custodial shared-liquidity layer it first released to developers in November 2025. Live across 13 EVM chains including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain, Aqua is designed as a registry rather than a traditional DeFi pool: liquidity providers approve token balances in their own wallets, create positions against those balances, and tokens move only when a matching swap is executed atomically. 1inch says that lets one wallet balance support multiple quotes while limiting execution to assets actually held. 1inch describes Aqua as a risk-controlled alternative to the pool model that dominates decentralized exchanges. It argues the design can improve capital efficiency because a wallet that cannot cover a swap is simply not called on, and the same balance can back several quotes at once. The company cited Dune research it commissioned showing that roughly 85% of concentrated liquidity across major decentralized exchanges was underutilized in the first half of 2026, equivalent to about $1.6 billion of the $1.84 billion tracked. For the launch, the 1inch Foundation has committed 10 million 1INCH in provider rewards through Merkl, led by Degensoft. A further 500,000 USDC from the 1inch DAO has been proposed, subject to governance approval. Aqua has undergone eight independent audits, including by OpenZeppelin, Nethermind, Hexens and Theori. 1inch said revoking token approval stops new fills once that change confirms on-chain, though providers still face market and smart-contract risk and swap fees are not guaranteed.