1INCH

1inch is a decentralized exchange aggregator and DeFi infrastructure provider. It launched in 2019 after its founders built a prototype at a hackathon, and it became one of the most used routing services in decentralized finance.

How 1inch works

When a user wants to swap tokens, 1inch searches across many decentralized exchanges and liquidity sources to find the best available price, often splitting a single trade across several venues to reduce slippage. This aggregation is the core function: individual exchanges each hold a fraction of total liquidity, so routing across them typically produces better execution than trading on any one of them.

Beyond aggregation, 1inch operates its own limit order protocol and a fusion mode where trades are filled by professional resolvers rather than executed directly by the user, which can reduce gas costs and mitigate exposure to front-running. The 1INCH token is used for governance and within the protocol's resolver and staking mechanisms.

1INCH has a maximum supply of 1.5 billion tokens, essentially all issued, with roughly 1.41 billion in circulation. The protocol is deployed across many EVM networks including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and others.

Role in the ecosystem

Aggregators occupy a structural position in DeFi: they sit between users and the underlying liquidity venues, and a large share of decentralized trading volume passes through them. 1inch is one of the longest-running and most widely integrated, and its routing algorithms are used both directly by users and through integrations in wallets and other applications. Aggregators also carry a specific risk profile: users grant token approvals to routing contracts, which makes the security of those contracts a direct concern.