1inch Co-Founder Anton Bukov Launches Second Tier After Exit He Calls a Firing

Anton Bukov, who co-founded decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch and, by his own account, led its protocol architecture and security, said the company fired him in late November and that he is now building a new infrastructure startup called Second Tier. 1inch disputes that he was fired.

Bukov said he remains a 1inch co-founder and a 50% shareholder but no longer takes part in the company's operations. He said he has no role in and no oversight of the protocol's product architecture or security, work he says he ran. He disclosed the split in a statement shared with The Defiant ahead of a public announcement Thursday.

1inch rejected key parts of that account. In a statement posted to X, the company said Bukov "is no longer contributing to the 1inch project and has not been actively involved in any associated organizations since December 2025," a month later than the late-November timing Bukov gave.

A 1inch spokesperson said the "fired" characterization is "factually inaccurate," because Bukov "was not a direct employee and, therefore, could not have been terminated from employment in that capacity." The spokesperson also said Bukov contributed to 1inch's architecture and security as part of a team with a different lead, rather than leading that work himself.

No Effect on The Protocol

1inch said the exit has no effect on the network.

"The protocols, infrastructure, and all core systems continue to operate as normal," the company said, adding that co-founder and Chief Executive Sergej Kunz and the existing leadership team remain in place and that "the strategy and roadmap remain unchanged." It thanked Bukov for his contributions and wished his new project well.

1inch, one of the first DEX aggregators when it emerged from a 2019 hackathon, routed about $2.7 billion in trades over the past 30 days, according to DefiLlama. That is down from roughly $14 billion a month in mid-2025, when The Defiant reported it ranked as the second-largest aggregator behind Solana's Jupiter. The 1INCH token, with a market value of about $104 million, was little changed ahead of the announcement, slipping around 1% over 24 hours in line with a similar dip in Bitcoin, per CoinGecko.

The break marks a rare public rupture between the two founders of a foundational DeFi protocol, and the two sides do not agree on how it happened. Bukov casts it as a firing after a fight over leadership; 1inch casts it as the departure of a contributor with no operational fallout. Underlying the dispute is a strategic divide: 1inch has spent the past year courting institutions and traditional finance, while Bukov says he wants to build a financial system with no friction and no middlemen.

Founder Split

"In late November 2025 I was fired," Bukov said in the statement. He said the experience left him with one lesson above all: that "the long-term success of any project stands on two pillars of equal weight — technical excellence and leadership grounded in values that hold under pressure."

Bukov said his role at 1inch was technical, covering the protocol's architecture, security and economic design. He said feedback from users and teammates over the past year convinced him he could no longer stay out of the management and operational side of the company, and that he spent months pushing for changes to how leadership and communication were run before he was let go.

He described the outcome as a "mature founder split, not a reaction to one specific decision," and said the disagreement was "about strategic direction, communication and leadership approach." Bukov declined to tie it to any single choice by 1inch and said he was not commenting on the company's current strategy.

A New Venture

Bukov is positioning Second Tier as an independent infrastructure company rather than a rival to 1inch. Asked whether it is another DEX or aggregator, he said: "No, it's not a DEX or a DEX aggregator, and it isn't being built 'against' 1inch." He said the company is building "secure, efficient systems that close the distance between economic intent and its execution," a phrase echoed in a manifesto published under his name.

The venture is short on specifics. Bukov said Second Tier has not disclosed any funding — "Nothing to disclose at this stage" — has not named its team, and is not sharing product details until it has a working system to show. He said hiring would respect prior employers and that team members would be introduced separately.

Bukov framed the move as a continuation of what he described as a track record of building new categories at 1inch, including the first DEX aggregator router, the Fusion Dutch-auction swap mechanism, trustless cross-chain execution, and Aqua, a shared-liquidity model. 1inch pushed back on that framing, with a spokesperson noting that Aqua is patented technology with multiple named authors and was a team effort rather than Bukov's alone. 1inch has said Aqua will open to the public in the first quarter of 2026.

DeFi Purism vs the Institutional Turn

The split surfaces as 1inch has leaned into traditional finance. The company integrated its swap engine into the Coinbase app in October, its largest U.S. client, and used a rebrand the same month to signal a pitch to institutions, with co-founder and Chief Executive Sergej Kunz saying its vision now "extends to all financial markets."

Bukov's stated aims point in a different direction. "I believe DeFi is the way to an open financial system, one with no friction and no middlemen," he said. "I'd rather build that than wait around for it." He said he is starting Second Tier with people who share those values "from day one."

The departure also lands during a weak stretch for 1inch. Its aggregator volumes have fallen well below their 2025 levels, and the 1INCH token trades more than 99% below its 2021 peak, leaving Bukov's exit entangled with questions about the protocol's momentum rather than his new venture alone.

Second Tier said further announcements will follow as development progresses, and Bukov pointed followers to the manifesto at tier.xyz and the account @tier_xyz on X. 1inch says its systems run as before and its roadmap is intact.