Welcome to Slate Sunday, the weekly function of Crypto presents in-depth interviews, expert analysis and thinking on-seds that go beyond the headlines to explore the ideas and voices that explore the future of crypto forms.
Question 1-inch co-founder Sergej Kunz about where Defi is going, and you get more than just your standard answer about financial inclusion or a hedge against Fiat-Ininen payment.
Kunz is not someone who cuts his words, and he dives in the future of the sector like a hunter who follows his prey; Targeted, ruthless and completely fearless. For Kunz, the future of Defi is seamless and, ultimately, peer-to-peer, so that a UX is delivered so smoothly that centralized exchanges are outdated.
If the leading DEX -Aaggregator and the Defi Ecosystem, complete with a slim new Rebrand, 1 inch has recently been integrated with Solana and launched Native, decentralized Swaps that span more than 12 EVM networks. Great smiling Kunz explains it:
“We acknowledged that we have to grow; the entire Defi space is not only on Ethereum anymore.”
It is a sign of the time. From the beginning in 2019, 1 inch was strictly an Ethereum story, which rode the first wave of Defi innovation. Kunz remembers:
“We started with Ethereum. It was only Ethereum. And we have added more EVM-compatible chains such as Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, all layers.”
Now, 14 chains later (with Solana that joins the peloton in April of this year), one thing is clear: Defi’s boundaries are gonders with the week, and his vision of seamless interoperability between ecosystems is no longer a distant dream.
“We have started combining the Defi room, all chains together, and now grow into non-EVM-compatible chains. We will also add bitcoin and all other block chains that we can integrate for the swaps of the cross-chain, so that we can unite all liquidity.”
If it sounds ambitious, it is probably because it is. Kunz is not the type of person who is satisfied with the second best. And why stay with fragmented liquidity if one platform can unite it all?
1 inch: trustless swaps and seamless execution
Kunz’s ruthless cross -chain focus is accompanied by a laser eye for both security and price. He is the emphasis on user autonomy and respects the core pillars of decentralized finances (such as the removal of the intermediary).
“Our value proposition is non-guardianship waps, which means that no one has to trust someone. And the second value proposition is the best performance of the most liquidity available.”
But uniting liquidity means more than just technical gymnastics. There is a goal in the longer term and it is about making centralized exchanges to a footnote in crypto history. He confirms:
“Theoretically, nobody needs centralized fairs by using 1 inch.”
Kunz insists that the magic of 1 inch is in user experience and the UX unites for multiple ecosystems and chains.
But how close is Defi to that mythical single-click, chain-agent stream that Web2 users want?
“We are almost there,” he says. “At the moment, when you do a Cross-Chain Swap, simply connect your wallet, click and confirm. You do not do any transaction yourself.”
On intention -based protocols, or ‘solving your own problem’
Behind the scenes it has taken innovation. The 1-inch protocol was invented in 2022 as a means to make Defi fairer and the fighting of ‘sandwich attacks’, the specific brand of advance running that haunts both liquidity providers and traders. He explains:
“We call it a intention based protocol for swaps.”
That expression ‘on intent -based protocol’ has surfaced everywhere lately. Unisewap X has written about it, and in fact Kunz points out that Uniswap X is based on the idea of 1inch; It is even mentioned in their white paper.
“We can create a protocol that sells users to market makers, arbitration traders and let the market makers compete between each other.”
Kunz compares the approach of 1inch with traditional fairs such as the Nasdaq, because people create orders and market makers fill them. What is different here is giving the order directly to an open, competitive ecosystem of professional traders who come first, first settle and also partially fill it. The figures prove the point:
“We have user scenarios in which someone exchanged 12 million USDT to Ethereum and got $ 135,000 more. If they did it directly with a Dex, they would become less.”
He talks about his own experience with sandwich attacks and says:
“I was sandwiched … Front-Run by an evil exchange. And I recognized, okay, we have to repair this.”
The protocol based on intention was therefore born out of necessity, he says with a grin:
“I have solved my own problem. Nobody can sandwich you or manipulate liquidity.”
From Defi to the wider crypto space
The conversation is about stablecoins and the user experience between chains. I point out that, despite the improvements, Defi is still devilish for standards to navigate, to switch between networks and set up portfolios. He shrugs and says that the ultimate goal is that users never have to worry about networks or bridges.
“It should be that users should not care about the chain … they just have to care what they have in USDC.”
As the route map progressed, growth is the only certainty for Kunz.
“We unite Defi -Liquidity … and then we go to the crypto space. We integrate Bitcoin. You can buy any sh*t coin, memecoin, which coin, you can buy real bitcoin, you get it in your wallet, and you can also sell bitcoin. The same for Litecoin, the same for Ripple.”
The vision of 1 inch is clear: growing from the “small Defi space” to the wider web3 world and ultimately also touch traditional financing. He goes out:
“Many companies at the moment, all banks, do tokenization of real-world assets, but there is not a secondary trading location where you can exchange them in one place. You have to go to every issue, perhaps to a bank, to a single bank, for example to buy tokenized wine. Safe, non-right way.”
The confrontation with centralized fairs
And what’s about the immediate horizon for 1 inch? Kunz explains that the one-three-three-year-old plan is to “push”, integrate more chains, go more cross-chain and offer a more seamless experience. He finally says with a sparkle in his eyes:
“To fight, test and compete with centralized fairs.”
Did I mention that Kunz was ambitious?
While most of the helm of CEXS have a world in mind where Defi and Cefi exist side by side, the Juggernuts of decentralized finances forget to be at the front.
And with centralized exchange spot volume that falls almost 28% in the second quarter of 2025, CEXS has to sleep with one eye open. Defi comes for their lunch.
