DeFi Aggregator is moving to "intent-driven" trading, and we have identified the winner

Highlights

According to data from DefiLlama and Messari, trading volume of decentralized exchange aggregators fell by approximately 40% in the first quarter of 2026. The market is consolidating, with each leading aggregator on different chains: Jupiter on the Solana chain, KyberSwap and CowSwap on the Ethereum chain, and 1inch has become a cross-chain leader with its cumulative transaction volume. Trading is shifting to an "intent-based" execution model; during market downturns, 1inch of Fusion's trading volume fell much less than its older protocols.

Decentralized exchange aggregators-tools that route on-chain transactions to the best prices in dozens of venues-have seen trading volumes fall sharply this year, despite the market's consolidation around a few leaders and a shift towards a new way of executing transactions. According to real-time data from Messari and DefiLlama, in the first quarter of 2026, the average daily trading volume of aggregators fell by approximately 40% month-on-month, from approximately US$4.6 billion to US$2.7 billion. Trading activity is not evenly distributed, but centralized, with each aggregator dominating a different chain.

1inch: Leader in cumulative trading volume

1inch is the DEX aggregator with the largest cumulative transaction volume, having processed hundreds of billions of dollars in historical transaction volume on about a dozen chains and obtained prices from more than 350 liquidity sources. It also operates as an industry infrastructure: its routing capabilities are integrated into widely used wallets such as MetaMask, Ledger, Trust Wallet and Trezor, so many users can trade through it without having to open a 1-inch app. In 2025, 1inch increased its support for Solana, expanding its business into one of the busiest transaction chains. The company is also a pioneer in the industry's biggest changes. It pioneered intent-based swaps through Fusion in 2022 and expanded it across chains through Fusion+ in 2024-a model that is now being adopted by competitors. Its fastest-growing business is tokenizing real-world assets. As of early March 2026, the cumulative trading volume of tokenized stocks routed through 1inch has exceeded US$2.5 billion, and the average transaction size has nearly doubled in a single month, from approximately US$2000 to US$3800-indicating that larger, more institutional orders are entering the market. According to Messari, despite a decline in overall transaction volume, the partnership with Ondo Finance drove a 45.9% month-on-month increase in daily active addresses and a 52.7% month-on-month increase in BNB Chain transaction volume. During the same period, the proportion of transactions settled by 1inch through its own native execution rather than routing to an external venue increased from 3.2% to 13.2%. The main shortcoming is Ethereum. Due to the rise of KyberSwap and CowSwap, 1inch's spot market share on the chain has dropped from approximately 25.2% at the end of 2025 to approximately 17% in the first quarter of 2026. At the end of July, 1inch officially launched Aqua, a self-managed "shared liquidity" layer across 13 chains and comes with a $1.37 million incentive plan. The plan addresses a problem discovered by an on-chain study conducted by Dune (commissioned by 1inch): In the first half of 2026, approximately $1.6 billion in centralized DeFi mobility was idle, with estimated annual losses of up to $150 million.

Jupiter

Jupiter has almost a monopoly on the Solana chain. DefiLlama data shows that it processes about 95% of the chain's aggregator transactions, and the cumulative transaction volume has far exceeded US$1 trillion. It is also embedded in mainstream Solana wallets such as Phantom, Backpack and Solflare as the default switching engine, and new users automatically route through it.

CowSwap and KyberSwap

On the Ethereum chain, the leaders are different names. According to DefiLlama, KyberSwap leads with a market share of about 31% in aggregate transaction volume, followed by CowSwap at about 22%, and 1inch is close to 15%. CowSwap is built by CoW Protocol and uses a "batch auction" model to settle orders at a uniform price. This design makes transactions within batches resistant to the common "early trading" and "sandwich attacks" on the chain. This makes it the preferred location for larger, MEV-sensitive orders.

Transition to the "intention" model

Across the industry, transaction execution is moving towards an intent-based model. Instead of specifying a transaction path and paying Gas fees, users state the expected results, with a network of professional "resolvers" competing to fill orders, absorb complexity and protect transactions from preemptive trading. CowSwap's batch auction, Uniswap's UniswapX, and 1inch's Fusion are all variants of this model. Today, this model carries the majority of non-retail transaction volume. The three protocols above dominate DeFi transactions, and according to DefiLlama, CoW alone handles approximately 22% of Ethereum aggregator transactions. The network of resolvers that fill orders is increasingly operated by professional trading companies, including Wintermute, GSR, Jump and Flow Traders, and Binance has also begun to offer intent-based trading to reduce failed transactions. This shift is evident in 1inch's own data. Messari reported that during the first quarter's decline, trading volume for its intent-based Fusion products fell by about 27%, while older versions of Gas-based aggregation agreements fell by about 60%. Studies have found that in transactions that face pre-emptive trading risk, intent-based execution is approximately 5 to 30 basis points higher than public chain memory pool routing, and the advantage is more obvious on large orders, while it is generally free of Gas fees and resistant to MEVs.