1inch is pushing a big idea: tokenized assets should not be trapped in old-school dollar-only trading lanes. The company says its new Aqua protocol is built to squeeze more out of liquidity, especially as real-world assets keep sliding into DeFi and demand a smarter setup. That matters because the next wave of tokenized stocks, bonds, and other assets needs more than flashy branding, it needs a market structure that can actually move with the flow.
At the center of the pitch is a simple complaint with a sharp edge. A lot of capital in decentralized exchanges just sits there, doing almost nothing, and 1inch wants to turn that dead weight into something active. Sergej Kunz, the company’s co-founder and CEO, says the problem gets even worse when tokenized assets enter the picture, because thin markets can dry up fast and leave traders with clunky execution and weak price action.
Kunz’s argument is that real-world assets, or RWAs, are arriving whether the market is ready or not. The catch is that these assets need infrastructure that can support actual liquidity instead of just listing them and hoping for the best. In his view, the old model of isolated pools leaves too much money idle, too many trades fragmented, and too much potential value stuck on the sidelines.
The number that really jumps out is the one 1inch says came from its own commissioned study. Roughly 80% of liquidity on decentralized exchanges is sitting unused at any given time, which adds up to about $1.6 billion not producing anything. That is a brutal figure for a market that loves to talk about efficiency, and it is exactly the kind of gap Aqua is meant to target.
Tokenized equities are already heating up around the world, even if U.S. investors are still largely on the outside looking in. Outside the United States, traders can already access a growing list of tokenized stocks through platforms like Robinhood, Kraken, and Ondo, which shows how quickly the category is maturing. The pace is fast enough that the plumbing behind these markets is starting to matter as much as the assets themselves.
Kunz makes the case that the real opportunity is not just buying a token that mirrors a stock. It is creating a market where tokenized assets can trade against one another directly, which could open up a much richer set of price relationships. In that setup, liquidity is not just parked in a single pair, it can be reused across multiple markets and earn fees along the way.
The example he gives is vivid because it cuts straight through the usual crypto jargon. “You can just buy all the top ten RWAs from Backed’s xStocks, Robinhood or whatever, and make trading positions among them,” Kunz said. “You could, theoretically, set up a trading pair for SpaceX and Apple stock. And then you have SpaceX-Tesla, and then Tesla-Apple, and then Microsoft. It’s a construct that allows you to benefit from the volume that comes from the movement of the RWAs.”
That is the kind of market logic traditional brokerages do not really offer. They are built around stock-to-dollar trading, not asset-to-asset trading, and that difference becomes more important as tokenized instruments spread. If one wallet can support multiple pairs at once, then the capital behind those trades can work harder instead of sitting in a single corner of the market.
When asked why Aqua matters, Kunz pointed to the limits of the old pool design. “When these RWAs are isolated in single two-token-pair pools, it’s not possible. So here we have additional efficiency,” he answered. That is the whole fight in miniature, one system locks liquidity into narrow lanes while the other tries to make it flow across a wider grid.
The broader tokenization boom has been promising a future where stocks live on-chain, but the reality has often felt more like familiar trading with extra layers of friction. Aqua is trying to change that by making reusable liquidity the main event instead of an afterthought. If tokenized assets are going to scale beyond the novelty stage, the market structure around them may have to look a lot less like Wall Street and a lot more like something built for movement.
