Dune Study for 1inch Finds 85% of Concentrated Liquidity Idle

An average of 85% of concentrated-liquidity capital sat underutilized across decentralized exchanges in the first half of 2026, according to onchain research by Dune, the analytics platform, produced for the DEX aggregator 1inch. The study found 29.5% of that capital was fully outside the active price range, working out to roughly $542M idle in a typical week.

Dune said out-of-range liquidity providers forgo on the order of $150M a year in fees, calculated as the idle total-value-locked multiplied by the roughly 35% fee APR that in-range capital earned over the same period.

1inch, which commissioned the study, framed it on its own account as showing "$1.6bn in DeFi capital is underutilized" and that "out-of-range positions miss out on $150mn in fees every year." Those figures describe different slices: the ~$1.6bn is roughly 85% of the pool studied, while the ~$542M weekly idle figure counts only positions fully out of range.

The research covers concentrated liquidity, the model in which providers deposit into a chosen price band rather than across an entire curve, boosting fee efficiency when price stays in range but earning nothing when it drifts out.

Dune said it rebuilt every position in the roughly 200 most active pools on Uniswap v3, PancakeSwap v3, Aerodrome Slipstream and Uniswap v4 from onchain deposit and withdrawal history, across 26 weekly snapshots and seven chains, covering about $1.84B in average TVL. Within the 85% it labeled underutilized, 29.5% was fully out of range while the rest sat in range but untouched by where price actually traded.

Most idle capital sits in individual wallets, Dune said, while automated managers and bots tend to keep positions in range. On Base Uniswap v3, contracts hold about half the capital but little of the idle, and individuals account for 82% of it. About a third of the idle capital has gone untouched for more than 90 days, heaviest on Uniswap.

Dune attributed idleness mostly to the asset pair and its volatility rather than the venue, noting even stablecoin pairs ran around 30% out of range.

The report's cover states the research was commissioned by 1inch, which builds tooling that routes and manages DEX liquidity and stands to benefit from its conclusion that "capital efficiency is still the open frontier." Dune said the venues that predate concentrated liquidity leave about 98.7% of capital underutilized, calling concentrated liquidity a large step up.