Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
On July 16th, Anton Bukov, co-founder of the decentralized exchange aggregation protocol 1inch, published an open statement confirming his departure from the day-to-day operations of 1inch. Anton Bukov, who was responsible for designing core architectures such as the 1inch Router, Fusion, and cross-chain Swap, ceased his involvement in company operations at the end of November 2025 due to disagreements over strategic direction and leadership. However, he retains his co-founder status and 50% of the shares.
The statement also announced the launch of a new project, Second Tier (tier.xyz). Anton Bukov positions Second Tier as an infrastructure company aimed at "shortening the distance between economic intent and on-chain execution," explicitly stating that the new project is neither a DEX nor an aggregator.
A Manifesto Mentioning No Products
All the content currently presented by Second Tier to the public is a manifesto published on tier.xyz.
The manifesto does not mention any specific product forms, technical architectures, or launch timelines. Its core argument is that friction in the current financial system (middlemen, settlement delays, permission barriers) is artificially designed. Optimizing within the existing framework is merely a "trade-off." The truly effective approach is to jump to the next level (the second tier) and work at the layer where the constraints themselves can be redesigned. This is the origin of the name Second Tier.
The manifesto states that its goal is not to create a single product but to build multiple architectures, creating categories that previously did not exist rather than competing within existing ones. It also mentions that the systems the team builds will enter the market in an open manner.
In an interview with The Defiant, Anton Bukov confirmed that Second Tier currently has no public financing, has not announced its team members, and will not reveal product details before having usable systems. When asked if the new project is another DEX or aggregator, his response was straightforward: "No, and it's not targeted at 1inch."
Strategic Disagreements and the Split
In his statement, Anton Bukov stated that he was fired from 1inch at the end of November 2025. He mentioned that he had spent months prior pushing for changes in the company's leadership approach and communication mechanisms, ultimately leading to his removal.
1inch contested the term "fired," officially stating that Anton Bukov was not a direct employee and therefore could not legally be fired. They added that his work on architecture and security was a team effort, with other individuals responsible.
Anton Bukov characterized this split as a mature founder breakup, with disagreements over strategic direction, communication methods, and leadership style. He still holds 50% of 1inch's equity, retains the co-founder title, but no longer plays any role in the protocol's product architecture or security matters. 1inch officially confirmed that Anton Bukov has not participated in any work of affiliated organizations since December 2025, and protocol operations are unaffected.
The background of the split is essentially 1inch's accelerated shift towards traditional finance in the second half of 2025.
In October 2025, 1inch completed a brand overhaul. CEO Sergej Kunz described the company's vision as extending to all financial markets. In the same month, 1inch integrated its swap engine into the Coinbase App, becoming its largest client-side partnership in the US market. 1inch's target customers began shifting from DeFi-native users to institutional and traditional finance users.
However, Anton Bukov held the opposite stance. He emphasized in his statement, "I believe DeFi is the path to an open financial system, without friction, without intermediaries. I would rather build it myself than wait around." During his time at 1inch, he led the design of core modules such as the DEX aggregation router, the Fusion swapping mechanism, and cross-chain execution—tools whose design logic pointed towards decentralization and permissionless access. In mid-November 2025, he was still publicly supporting the developer version of the shared liquidity protocol Aqua, only to be told to leave a few weeks later.
The Current State of 1inch
Anton Bukov's public announcement of his departure comes at a time when 1inch is experiencing a significant business contraction.
According to the "State of 1inch Q1 2026" report released by Messari on May 22nd, 1inch's average daily trading volume fell from $244.9 million in Q4 2025 to $97.1 million in Q1 2026, a sequential decline of 60.3%. During the same period, the average daily trading volume for the entire DEX aggregator sector dropped from $4.6 billion to $2.7 billion, a decrease of about 40%, indicating that 1inch's decline significantly exceeded the industry average.
Regarding market share, 1inch's share on the networks it deployed on decreased from 25.2% in Q4 to 17.0% in Q1, its ranking falling from first to fourth, behind Kyber (23.9%), CoWSwap (18.0%), and ZeroEx (17.9%).
Additionally, 1inch's partnership with Ondo Finance routed over $2.5 billion in cumulative trading volume of tokenized stocks and ETFs on BNB Chain. The Limit Order Protocol's average daily trading volume on BNB Chain grew against the trend by 52.7%, making it the only chain showing growth. The Fusion protocol's average daily trading volume declined by only 26.5%, significantly better than the 60.3% drop for the aggregation protocol. The number of daily average Fusion orders actually increased by 31.3%, rising from 13,200 to 17,300, suggesting a shift among users towards smaller, higher-frequency trading patterns.
Sergej Kunz, in response to Anton Bukov's departure, emphasized that it does not affect the infrastructure and system operations of the 1inch network. Market reaction was muted, with the 1INCH token dropping only about 1% within 24 hours of the news announcement.
Pending Questions
Anton Bukov currently holds 50% of 1inch's equity and retains the co-founder title but has no say in the protocol's operations. He has not indicated plans to sell his shares or take any shareholder action. Second Tier remains in a purely conceptual stage—no product, no financing, and no publicly announced team.
It remains to be seen how Anton Bukov will handle his 1inch equity, when Second Tier will transform from a manifesto into a usable product, and whether 1inch's institutionalization path can reverse the trend of declining trading volume.
