Reimagining the AMM with 1inch Aqua I Tanner Moore

Sun, Aug 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

In this workshop at ETHGlobal New York 2026, Tanner Moore, a technical account manager at 1inch, presents reimagining the AMM with 1inch Aqua, covering the current DEX landscape and its assumptions, what Aqua is and how it reimagines the AMM, extending beyond AMMs, and the benefits for LPs, traders, and builders. He starts with the classic example: Bob the liquidity provider deposits ETH and USDC into a Uniswap V2 pool, then Alice trades against that liquidity and Bob earns fees. But with many AMMs and LPs, the ecosystem grows fragmented. 1inch solved the trader side long ago with its aggregator, keeping Alice's experience simple, but fragmentation only accelerated behind the scenes, with endless reimplementation of custody, accounting, and settlement. From the LP's perspective, choosing where to deposit is painful, participation has high opportunity cost (locking funds in one AMM forfeits other yields and often DAO governance), moving funds is high-friction and security-intensive, and new projects keep incentivizing more fragmentation. Tanner explains Aqua's core question: can you get the AMM experience without an AMM holding funds in the middle? In Aqua, liquidity stays in the LP's own wallet, unbound to any strategy, so Bob can sell, send, or reuse his tokens freely while settlement stays atomic and feels identical to a normal swap for Alice. The architecture has three parts: the Aqua router (a simple 80-line contract handling LP registration, balances, and swap settlement), Aqua applications (swap logic like constant product, concentrated liquidity, and stable swap), and strategies (the accounting of an LP's commitments). He walks through the on-chain flow where Bob permits the router and calls a ship function, an indexer picks up his commitment, and a trader's quote pulls from Bob's wallet on verification. Benefits include selling committed tokens anytime, keeping governance voting power, and reusing the same tokens across strategies so $4,000 of real liquidity becomes $6,000 of effective liquidity. He introduces SwapVM, a virtual machine inside the EVM that abstracts AMM design into building-block op codes (price curves, taker restrictions, fees, decay functions), extensible with external calls or custom op codes. He notes Aqua extends beyond AMMs to prediction markets, privacy pools, and flash loans, shares the market impact for LPs, users, and builders, and closes with bounties ($5,000 for new Aqua apps, $2,000 for extending existing ones) and Q&A. 00:00 Introduction 00:11 What the Talk Will Cover 00:44 The Classic LP Example With Bob 01:24 How a Trader Swaps Against the Pool 01:41 Why the Ecosystem Gets Fragmented 01:52 How 1inch Solved the Trader Side 02:33 Why Fragmentation Only Accelerated 02:51 LP Drawback: Choosing Where to Deposit 03:09 The High Opportunity Cost of Participation 03:28 Losing Access to Governance 03:50 Why Moving Funds Is High Friction 04:24 How New Projects Incentivize Fragmentation 04:50 The Problem With Funds in the Middle 05:13 The Question Behind Aqua 05:36 How Liquidity Stays in the LP Wallet 06:11 The Three Parts of Aqua's Architecture 06:21 The Aqua Router 07:07 Aqua Applications 07:27 Aqua Strategies 07:50 Walking Through the On-Chain Flow 08:46 How the Commitment Is Indexed 09:04 How a Trader Pulls From Bob's Wallet 10:19 Reusing Tokens Across Strategies 10:40 Turning $4,000 Into $6,000 of Liquidity 11:31 Handling Pressure on the Same LP 12:10 Beyond Constant Product: Introducing SwapVM 12:58 SwapVM as Building Blocks for Swaps 13:35 Solidity vs SwapVM Side by Side 14:56 Aqua Extends Beyond AMMs 15:50 A Flash Loan Example in Aqua 16:31 Participating in Many Strategies at Once 17:12 The Impact on the DeFi Market 17:50 The Aqua Bounties 18:10 Q&A: Virtual Balances 19:31 Q&A: Using Custom Op Codes 20:42 Q&A: SwapVM as a Solidity Interpreter 21:14 Q&A: Liquidity Ranges 22:06 Q&A: EOA vs Contract LPs 22:20 Closing _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHGlobal New York 2026* This workshop is specifically for ETHGlobal New York 2026, a 3-day hackathon held June 12-14 at the Metropolitan Pavilion, bringing together the most skilled web3 developers, designers and product builders from all around the globe for a weekend-long adventure to advance the Ethereum ecosystem! Watch the full ETHGlobal New York 2026 playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh7MZ8T-ict6YshkFDw9WJCu _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _