It claims to have been sidelined due to internal strategic disagreements

Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

On July 16, Anton Bukov, co-founder of the decentralized trading aggregation protocol 1inch, issued a public statement confirming his departure from the daily operations of 1inch. Anton Bukov was responsible for designing core architectures such as 1inch Router, Fusion, and cross-chain Swap, and stopped participating in the company's operations at the end of November 2025 due to disagreements over strategic direction and leadership, but retains his status as a co-founder and 50% ownership.

The statement also announced the launch of a new project called Second Tier (tier.xyz), with Anton Bukov positioning 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 declaration that does not mention any products

The only content publicly showcased by Second Tier is a declaration published on tier.xyz.

The declaration does not mention any specific product forms, technical architectures, or launch timelines, asserting that the friction in the current financial system (intermediaries, settlement delays, permission barriers) is artificially designed, and optimizing within the existing framework is merely a "trade-off." The truly effective approach is to jump to a higher layer (second tier) and work at a level where constraints can be redesigned. This is the origin of the name Second Tier.

The declaration states that its goal is not to create a product but to develop multiple architectures, building categories that did not previously exist, rather than competing within existing categories. It also mentions that the systems built by the team will enter the market in an open manner.

In an interview with The Defiant, Anton Bukov confirmed that Second Tier is currently not publicly raising funds, has not announced team members, and will not disclose product details before there are usable systems. When asked if the new project is another DEX or aggregator, his reply was straightforward: "No, and it's not against 1inch either."

Disputes and breakup over strategic direction

In the statement, Anton Bukov claimed he was dismissed from 1inch at the end of November 2025, stating that prior to this, he had spent months pushing for changes in the company's leadership style and communication mechanisms, ultimately being sidelined.

The 1inch side disputed the term "dismissal," with officials stating that Anton Bukov was not a direct employee and therefore could not be legally dismissed, asserting that his work in architecture and security was a team effort with other persons in charge.

Anton Bukov characterized this split as a matured founders' breakup, with disagreements regarding strategic direction, communication style, and leadership. He still holds 50% of 1inch's equity and retains the title of co-founder, but has no role in the product architecture and security affairs of the protocol. 1inch officially confirmed that Anton Bukov has not been involved in any affiliated organization's work since December 2025, and protocol operations are unaffected.

The context of the split is actually that 1inch has been accelerating its move toward traditional finance in the second half of 2025.

In October 2025, 1inch completed a rebranding, with CEO Sergej Kunz stating the company's vision extends to all financial markets. In the same month, 1inch integrated its swap engine into the Coinbase App, becoming its largest client partnership in the U.S. market. 1inch's target customers have begun shifting from native DeFi users to institutional and traditional finance users.

However, Anton Bukov's stance is contrary; in his statement, he emphasized, "I believe DeFi is the path to an open financial system, without friction and 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, Fusion exchange mechanism, and cross-chain execution, all of which pointed toward decentralization and permissionless access. In mid-November 2025, he was still supporting the developer version of the shared liquidity protocol Aqua, only to be informed weeks later that he was to leave.

The current state of 1inch

The timing of Anton Bukov’s public departure coincided with 1inch experiencing a significant business contraction.

According to the State of 1inch Q1 2026 report published by Messari on May 22, 1inch's average daily trading volume fell from $244.9 million in Q4 2025 to $97.1 million in Q1 2026, representing a 60.3% quarter-on-quarter decline. During the same period, the overall average daily trading volume for the entire DEX aggregator sector dropped from $4.6 billion to $2.7 billion, a decline of about 40%, with 1inch's decline significantly exceeding the industry average.

In terms of market share, 1inch's share on the networks where it was deployed fell from 25.2% in Q4 to 17.0% in Q1, dropping from first to fourth place, trailing behind Kyber (23.9%), CoWSwap (18.0%), and ZeroEx (17.9%).

Additionally, 1inch's collaboration with Ondo Finance has routed over $2.5 billion in tokenized stocks and ETF cumulative transaction volume on the BNB Chain, while the Limit Order Protocol on the BNB Chain has seen a 52.7% increase in average daily trading volume, making it the only chain to experience growth. The average daily trading volume of the Fusion protocol only decreased by 26.5%, clearly outperforming the 60.3% decline of the aggregation protocols. The average number of orders for Fusion, on the other hand, grew by 31.3%, rising from 13,200 to 17,300, indicating users are shifting toward smaller, higher-frequency trading models.

Sergej Kunz emphasized in response to Anton Bukov's departure that it would not affect the infrastructure and system operations of the 1inch network. The market reacted calmly, with the 1INCH token dropping only about 1% within 24 hours after the announcement.

Unresolved issues

Anton Bukov currently holds 50% of 1inch's equity, retains the title of co-founder, 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 is still in the pure concept stage, with no products, no funding, and no publicly disclosed team.

It will be worth watching how Anton Bukov handles his equity in 1inch, when Second Tier will transition from declaration to usable product, and whether 1inch's institutional path can reverse the ongoing decline in trading volume.