Shocking! 1inch’s founder has been kicked out, walking away with 50% equity to launch a new project—will the DEX aggregator be upended?

Today, let’s talk about something. Anton Bukov, the co-founder of 1inch—known in the circles as a real technical genius—has been shown the door. He personally designed the 1inch Router, Fusion, and cross-chain Swap, only to be kicked out of day-to-day operations by the end of November 2025. The official explanation is “differences in strategic direction.” Plainly put—he wanted to keep walking the old road of DeFi decentralization, while 1inch CEO Sergej Kunz was firmly set on moving toward traditional finance.

Anton issued his own statement, saying he was dismissed at the end of November 2025. Note that 1inch’s official response rebutted that “he was not an employee, so there is no legal concept of being dismissed.” But the outcome is the same: he retained the co-founder title and 50% equity, while the protocol’s product architecture and security matters are no longer up for discussion without him. This guy turned around and started a new project called Second Tier. At the moment, it only has a declaration on tier.xyz—no product, no funding, no team.

I read Second Tier’s declaration three times. The core message is that in today’s financial system, middlemen, settlement delays, and permission barriers are all artificially designed; optimizing within the existing framework is just making compromises with a different pose—what they want is to jump to the next layer and redesign the constraints themselves from scratch. It sounds pretty mystical. The goal isn’t to build a product, but to create an entirely new category that didn’t exist before. When Anton accepted an interview with The Defiant, he explicitly said: not a DEX, not an aggregator, and not something built specifically for 1inch.

But what really makes me alert is the state of 1inch right now. In its 2026 Q1 report, Messari provided hard data: 1inch’s average daily trading volume plunged from $244.9 million in Q4 2025 to $97.10 million in Q1 2026—a cliff-like drop of 60.3%. In the same period, the entire DEX aggregator segment only fell by 40%. Market share slipped from 25.2% to 17%, and its ranking slid from first to fourth, overtaken by Kyber, CoWSwap, and ZeroEx.

There’s one detail you need to pay attention to. Fusion’s average daily trading volume only dropped by 26.5%, while the average daily number of orders actually increased by 31.3%, from 13,200 to 17,300. This suggests users are doing small high-frequency “escape” style trades, while the aggregator’s core business is bleeding. The only standout is the partnership with Ondo Finance: on BNB Chain, it routed over $2.5 billion in tokenized stocks and ETFs. Meanwhile, the Limit Order Protocol’s daily trading volume bucked the trend, rising by 52.7%.

You all should品品 this timeline. In October 2025, 1inch completed a brand reshuffle. That same month, the CEO publicly stated the vision was to extend to all financial markets. Also in that month, it integrated the swap engine into the Coinbase App. The target customers shifted from DeFi-native users to institutions and traditional finance. Then in November, Anton was still promoting the shared liquidity protocol Aqua—just a few weeks later, he was notified to leave. This isn’t “differences.” This is route clearing.

Anton himself said: “I believe DeFi is the path to an open financial system—no friction, no middlemen. I’d rather build it myself than just wait.” It sounds like an idealist’s manifesto, but his technical track record is there. If Second Tier really can create a new paradigm that doesn’t require optimizing within the existing framework, then it would be worth paying attention to. But for now, it’s basically a blank sheet of paper.

How is the market reacting? After the news was released, the $1INCH token price fell by only 1% in the first 24 hours—almost no reaction at all. This suggests institutional capital had already Price in the split, or they simply don’t care. But retail traders need to think about one thing: Anton still holds 50% equity in 1inch. He has no say over the protocol, but he hasn’t said he wants to sell. If in the future he does decide to monetize, that would be the real nuclear bomb—directly dumping 50% of the circulating supply? Or selling via OTC block trades? No one knows.

My take is simple: this is a classic break between DeFi-native believers and the institutionalized camp. 1inch is betting on a broader path—serving Wall Street. Anton is betting on a narrower path—returning to pure open finance. Who’s right? Let the data speak. 1inch’s trading volume is still accelerating its decline, and the institutionalized route hasn’t shown real returns yet. Anton’s new project doesn’t even have a whitepaper—he’s betting on his personal technical credibility.

Finally, let’s quote an idea. In Soros’s theory of reflexivity: participants’ cognition affects fundamentals. When Anton says “I’d rather build it myself,” the market responds with a 1% drop, telling him that without him, 1inch can still keep moving. But when Second Tier truly ships something usable, reflexivity will flip back—capital will reassess the value of 1inch. For now, you only need to watch two things: how Anton’s equity gets handled, and when Second Tier turns its slogans into code.

Don’t worry—time will provide the answers.

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