From Institutions and Memes to the Future of DeFi

At the heart of DeFi innovation, 1inch has built one of the most popular decentralized exchange aggregators in the space.

At Paris Blockchain Week 2025, we sat down with Aleksandra “Sasha” Fetisova, Head of Business Development at 1inch, to understand what’s next: for 1inch, DeFi, and the industry, in general.

Sasha revealed the latest upgrades, challenges in the ecosystem, and the trends she believes will reshape DeFi over the next few years.

Reinventing the Swap Experience

For those unfamiliar, 1inch doesn’t operate like a traditional DEX — it’s a DEX aggregator. Instead of providing a standalone marketplace, it scans hundreds of decentralized exchanges to deliver the best possible rates to its users.

Recent updates, Sasha explained, have pushed this even further.

“We improved our swap experience with an intent-based, cross-chain gasless solution called Fusion,” she said. “It’s interoperable across EVM chains, doesn’t rely on third-party bridges, and is protected against MEV [maximum extractable value] attacks. It’s all about making swaps faster, cheaper, and safer.”

For regular users, this means lower friction and lower cost, particularly when moving assets across chains — a pain point that’s long plagued decentralized finance.

Fees are a sensitive topic in crypto, where gas costs and platform cuts can quietly drain portfolios.

“Our users can be sure they’re doing direct swaps without any added fees,” Sasha emphasized. “We’re a community-driven project, and we don’t charge users on our DApp or mobile wallet.”

Behind the scenes, she credits the project’s developers for optimizing routing and smart contracts to keep swaps efficient and cheap. But that’s not the only factor:

“We aggregate liquidity from over 500 DEXs across 10 to 13 chains,” she said. “Plus, in Fusion mode, we work with professional market makers — resolvers — who pull liquidity not just from decentralized sources but also from centralized exchanges.”

Security Through Minimalism

One feature of 1inch’s approach is its laser focus on security.

“We’ve never been hacked,” Sasha stated firmly. “That’s because we do at least five to ten audits every time we update or launch something new.”

But it’s not just audits. She pointed to co-founder and CTO Anton Bukov’s philosophy of writing minimal, highly efficient smart contracts.

“Instead of creating bloated, complex code, Anton spends hours thinking and then writes a small, functional piece of code — something that can be audited quickly and runs efficiently,” she explained. “It’s a very intentional design.”

Going Global: From Decentralized Team to Dubai Hub

Although 1inch was born during the remote-work explosion of COVID, the team recently opened its first physical office in Dubai.

“We see the IMEA region as very fruitful, especially under current market conditions,” Sasha shared. “If our community is traveling to Dubai, we’re happy to show them around!”

She hinted that Dubai’s choice aligns with favorable conditions for crypto innovation.

Looking beyond 1inch’s immediate roadmap, Sasha reflected on the broader trends shaping DeFi.

“In the next cycle, we’ll see more institutions entering DeFi,” she predicted. “We’re already seeing centralized exchanges like Binance and OKX launching Web3 wallets, and even banks — like Societe Generale with its FORGE platform — exploring DeFi integrations.”

On the more chaotic side of the market, she acknowledged the rise of meme coins.

“When Trump launched his meme coin, it brought in a lot of new users, but many of them got wrecked,” she said. “I’d love to see some kind of education or maybe even system notifications warning people that meme coins are meme coins — they’re not guaranteed wealth machines.”

Real-World Assets and AI: The Next Frontiers

Sasha is particularly excited about the tokenization of real-world assets.

“I met someone who tokenized mangoes for an African central bank — can you imagine?” she said, laughing. “We’re going to see more real estate tokenization, hedge fund tokenization… These are the trends that could bring the first billion users into crypto.”

And what about onboarding those billions?

“We need AI agents,” Sasha asserted. “Imagine an AI assistant in the 1inch wallet that guides new users, answers their questions, and helps them navigate features. I can only help maybe 100 people a day; an AI agent can help thousands, 24/7.”

Towards the end of April, 1inch had a major announcement: its expansion to Solana.

“We’re not just EVM-compatible anymore; we’re expanding to Layer 1s, and we invite users to guess which chains are coming next.”