1inch Network Raises $175 Million At $2.25 Billion Valuation To Bring Traditional Finance Into DeFi
Summary
According to 1inch’s team, the investment target was initially set at $70 million but eventually more than doubled—to account for the growing interest in decentralized finance (DeFi), a sprawling ecosystem of financial applications and services operating without the middlemen. The next month, its competitor Aave unveiled an offering, which, similarly to what 1inch is trying to do, would operate permissioned pools for KYC-ed users, removing roadblocks for regulated institutions to partake in the budding economy. Now, 1inch operates the largest DEX aggregator by market share, which surpassed $100 billion in volume on the Ethereum network alone (where it’s approaching one million users). Though decentralized exchanges have gained popularity, especially among high net worth, sophisticated traders, reaching over $30 billion in value locked, many users might prefer this type of aggregation services as opposed to trading directly on the likes of Uniswap and Sushiswap. By design, DEX aggregators like 1inch and its competitors, such as 0x API or ParaSwap, source liquidity from different decentralized exchanges and thus attempt to offer better token swap rates than a user could get on any single platform.