Why DEX Aggregator 1inch Sold 11,000 ETH

The platform’s cofounder Sergej Kunz explained that the $21 million transaction was executed “above on-chain market price.”

A large on-chain transfer from a wallet labeled “1inch Team Investment Fund Collection” led users to believe that the team was selling a significant chunk of tokens. 1inch is the largest exchange aggregator by daily volume, which scans decentralized exchanges for the best available price for crypto traders. 

The transaction, viewable on blockchain tracking tool Etherscan, shows that 11,000 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH) were sent through the platform’s version 5 aggregation router.

“Hopefully they are worse traders than ETH foundation,” wrote blockchain user “@spreekaway” who shared the transaction on Twitter, making a reference to previous sales by the Ethereum Foundation who have historically managed to sell tokens before adverse market moves.

1inch team dumped approx 11k eth an hour ago

hopefully they are worse traders than eth foundation pic.twitter.com/sHc1ZBTAeT

— Spreek (@spreekaway) July 5, 2023

Sergej Kunz, cofounder of 1inch, responded to spreekaway’s tweet with a screenshot of the execution page of a custom chain ID, explaining that the transaction was done to test a new feature of the protocol’s Fusion mode. Kunz claimed that the transfer was executed at the best price, above the on-chain market, with no transaction costs and maximal extractable value (MEV) protection.

It’s just battle testing 🙂

— Sergej Kunz (@deacix) July 5, 2023

In statements made to The Block, Kunz said that the Fusion mode made it possible to custom preset duration, start and end amount.

“This kind of strategy is very helpful for rebalancing assets (for DAOs, Hedge and Investment Funds). Based on the results, the trade was executed with better average rate compared to just a market swap,” he said.

Fusion was launched in December to make swaps more cost-efficient without network fees and included a security upgrade to protect users from MEV sandwich attacks. Fusion is active on Ethereum, Polygon and BNB Chain, but will eventually be activated on all compatible networks.